Justin Maxwell, One-Act Judge Interview
Interview with One-Act Play Judge, Justin Maxwell
By Reine Dugas
What is it about reading a play that first captures your interest?
I’m in it for the novelty! I want to see something that I’ve never seen before. I’m happiest when I walk out of a theatre asking: What the hell was that?!? If I can say that a show was thing X in style Y, I’m far less interested in it than when I’m emotionally engaged and have to ask why.
What are you always happy to see in a play?
I want to see something evocative and powerful. Something I wasn’t expecting. The guitarist David Gillmor once said (I have no idea where) that if you show people a powerful enough image, they’ll give it meaning. I rather like that.
In grad school, a friend and I would joke that drama was the superior genre because if a fiction writer wanted to have Che Guevara walk into a room wearing a prom dress and carrying a duck, they’d have to spend pages of prose setting that world up. But, as soon as Che Guevara walks on stage wearing a prom dress and carrying a duck, people think, “What’s he gonna do with that duck?” They believe it because they see it, and as dramaturgs we can lead them from there. So, I’m looking for something unexpected. Something that pulls me forward in my chair.
What advice do you have for new playwrights?
Write to inspire all the other artists who will come together to make your play. All too often I see young writers include directions like “down stage center” or “blue lights from the grid.” Such phrases are a sufficient first attempt at getting one’s imagination onto the page; however, they make for terrible late drafts. Instead, write to inspire. If it’s a scene full of dread, don’t talk about the lights or the blocking; let the dread inspire the other artists. When that happens, the emotional truth of what we’re making becomes manifest. For example, I’m deeply proud of a stage direction in my play Your Lithopedion, which is simply “she does the raunchiest thing possible that’s still funny.” The important thing isn’t what the actor does but that it’s raunchy and funny. Every production has interpreted the physical actions differently, and always gotten it right.
What have you been reading lately?
I just finished Mice 1961 by Stacey Levine. I’ve been a huge fan of her work for a long time. She’s the Kafka of our time, making the mundane world disquieting in a way that’s slippery, shiny, and dangerous like a palm full of mercury. Carolyn Hembree’s For Today is just flipping amazing too. I loved it, and am looking forward to reading it again—it’ll probably take a few reads before I feel like I’m not reading it for the first time! In theatre, Bella Poynton’s Medusa Undone and Reginald Edmund’s Daughters of the Moon have been haunting me. I was fortunate enough to read a draft of Tim Braun’s Coney Island Land and am more than a little jealous of how he makes tone so masterfully.
What plays have you gone to recently that you love?
I’ve become rather wild about the Liz Duffy Adams play Born with Teeth. Through some blessing of the theatre gods, I was able to see it on opening weekend at The Alley in Houston, then on opening weekend at The Guthrie in Minneapolis, then I saw it twice at Le Petit here in NOLA. The play is a razor blade. Every word of the dialog is doing something in the text, and doing something else in the subtext, and it’s all always driving the action forward. Normally, I can be dismissive of narrative, representational theatre, but the script is such a masterwork of craft that I have no choice but to love it. When I saw it at Le Petit, I kept embarrassing myself by leaning over the grad student by me and saying variations of “Did you see how she did that!?!” For a writer struggling with tension, stakes, or dialog, few texts could offer a better masterclass.
Learn more about Justin and his work at his website.
