I was less formal early on. With In the Heart of America,
I knew my first scene and my last. I had to find the
middle, and that was an adventure for me. In contrast,
my new play for Actors Theatre of Louisville (a cocommission with Berkeley Rep), The McAlpine Spillway,
is perhaps one of the more riotous, disquieting plays I’ve
written. So in order to contain the play’s subject matter
and its characters (who are teenagers in the 1970s), I
use the Shakespearean sonnet as a framework for the
play. Fourteen scenes. Internal structural rhyme. I apologize if that sounds a bit grand. It’s not. In other words,
I threw a bridle on it. With a two piece bit. I needed a
tight rein to guide the thing, to keep it from bolting.
Signature: What got you thinking about
And I and Silence?
NW: I’ve long been interested in periods of American
history where the realities and struggles of everyday
lives have been submerged. We think of the 1950s as a
Leave it to Beaver period, a decade of quiet before the
storm of the 1960s. But the 1950s were a turbulent era
with ferocious labor strikes, push-backs against racism and poverty. We live and dream within one of the
most oppressive economic systems in the world. We are
told that we can have peace and prosperity if we just
work hard. Well, the majority of Americans have been
working damn hard and then harder for too long now
and have very little to show for it. As children we’re
taught to just believe, and it will work out. And when
we grow up, if it doesn’t work out and we’re still hungry
or homeless or imprisoned, don’t question the system,
just “dream harder, dream harder.” And yet no matter
how thorough these teachings are, people still question
and resist, creatively and persistently. And I and Silence
is, like all my plays, about these people. It is also partly
inspired by a friendship from my childhood that still
inspires me, still haunts me.
Roslyn Ruff in
Things of Dry Hours
at New York Theatre
Workshop, 2009.
Signature: How did the play develop?
NW: The London-based theatre company Clean Break commissioned the play. There were a couple of stipulations one
had to follow: most importantly, the characters had to be female because the play would tour women’s prisons. So while I
wanted to look at the other side of 1950s America, I was also interested in friendships between people in prison, how they
bond, and when they get out, what world they face.
Signature: And this is another play of yours in which children feature prominently.
NW: Yes. I don’t think there are enough challenging and complicated roles for young people on stage. They’re not credited
with sufficient intelligence and insight, especially teenagers. Perhaps that’s one reason The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek is
done more widely in universities, because young people connect with it.
Signature: Can you talk a bit about the language in your plays? I read an interview in which you referred
to it as “tough poetry,” which felt very apt to me.
NW: I think it’s tricky for a playwright to talk about how they use language in a play. One could say that it’s a slightly
heightened, muscular language that I use, but perhaps there’s evasion in saying so because it’s also partly how I’ve heard
people talk since I was young. When people have so little, like in most of Kentucky, language is a kind of currency, and it’s
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