BETWEEN THE LINES – KINSHIP: A weekly look at the creative process through a literary lens.

THEATRE’S EXECUTIVE WOMEN

Among other themes, Kinship explores what it means to be a woman in power falling into a dangerous obsession. As rehearsals for the American premiere ofKinship raced along, WTF Literary Assistant Rachel Wiegardt-Egel sat down with WTF’s resident female executive, Artistic Director Mandy Greenfield; playwright Carey Perloff (who has helmed San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater for the past 23 seasons); and Obie Award-winning director Jo Bonney to discuss the play and their experiences as leaders in theatre.

[RACHEL WIEGARDT-EGEL]
In the relationship between SHE and HE, talent, passion, and power seem to be inextricably linked. The Prologue is a sort of “chicken or the egg” debate: highly simplified, “are you attracted to someone because they’re talented or do you believe someone to be talented because you find them attractive?” How does this moment in the Prologue speak to the play as a whole?

[JO BONNEY]
What’s interesting is that the Prologue is, in some ways, the heart of the play, and that question is one of the play’s key elements. This woman, at this particular time of her life, is successful; she has power; she has a very happy marriage; she has beautiful children. There seems to be nothing missing in her life. And then this young journalist comes along. What is that bond between them? What is she attracted to?

[CAREY PERLOFF]
To me, the question of what triggers desire or interest is so fascinating, and I wanted to turn it on its head in this play. Men who are talented are always magnets, but female power can be very threatening, for whatever reason. Power is innately interesting. It’s what all of Shakespeare is about. Then, when you add sexuality to it, and the person in power is a woman, the stakes go way up. It’s sort of unknown territory, and that’s fun to write about.

[RW] Carey, early in the play, the three characters each see a production of Racine’s Phèdre that continues to impact them throughout. Would you tell us a bit about that story and why you decided to highlight it?

[CP] It’s such a great archetypal story, but also so subversive. It’s based on a Greek myth and it’s about this extraordinarily complicated woman, Phèdre. She’s married to Theseus, who goes out and slays dragons and has affairs with Amazons, and she’s alone in her palace with his stepson, Hippolytus. And she becomes literally obsessed with him. I started writing Kinship because I was directing Phèdre and I was really trying to understand the nature of obsession. I love obsession, but it’s really strange. It’s not rational: it feeds on itself, so you need more, and more, and more of that drug to keep you feeling alive, even though you know it’s destructive. When it turns out that Hippolytus is in love with someone else, Phèdre becomes a monster, and decides she’s going to do whatever she can do to take them down.

[RW] I’d love to hear more about what inspired Kinship. Did your experiences as Artistic Director of ACT inform the main character?

[CP] You can only write out of your own soul: I’ve wrestled a long time with these questions. I started running a theatre when I was very young, which is complicated—when you’re a woman, everybody treats you like you’re a child, the press talks about you differently. People say, men are hired on their potential, and women are hired on their resumes, which means that women are not quite at the table, no matter what. That, I’ve experienced. On the other hand, the wonderful thing about writing a play is that all the characters become your point of view. I spent a huge amount of time thinking about that man. And thinking about what it is to be somebody like that, who’s enamored with somebody’s talent, and how humiliating it is to think that you’ve been hired because you’re the love object, not because of your talent. What is that? How does he navigate that? He really moved me. You have to fight for the characters—fight for the ones that are least like you, in some ways.

[RW] Mandy, when you were considering what to program for your first season as Artistic Director of WTF, what about this play especially struck a chord with you?

[MANDY GREENFIELD]
I’m attracted to the courage of the play. The writing itself is fantastic—it’s alive, it has a thrilling vortex-like feel. I’m sucked in and I want to know what will happen between these three people onstage. So at the core, it’s just great dramatic writing. What differentiates it from a lot of other wonderful pieces of writing, though, is the SHE character. You don’t often find women characters rendered with this appetite for life. This is a character who wants it all, and she will chase it all, and she will do so unapologetically, and at any cost. It’s a narrative we’re exposed to frequently, only from the male point of view: powerful, successful men—with good marriages, who make a lot of money, who are influencers—who chase what they want because they believe they’re entitled to it, or they deserve it, or they can do so without consequences for anyone or anything in their path. I think that we are deserving of a narrative that looks at that from a female perspective, and this play does that.

[RW] Jo, in your career, how have gender roles come into play in the rehearsal room?

[JB] I think time changes things. When you’re younger, you haven’t yet developed all your muscles, in terms of how to approach a work and deal with people. My problem often came when I would be dealing with a crew in a theatre—these older men, who were just not having it. I didn’t come out of theatre training, so at that time, I didn’t have the terminology. I knew what I wanted, exactly what I wanted. But there’s a way of speaking that tells people, “they know what they’re talking about.” I have to say, one of the joys of getting older is there comes a sort of maturity or sense of yourself—really, you just don’t take the bullshit. Also, there are so many great young female directors now. It’s getting better, which gives us all hope.

[RW] Does your experience navigating that leadership position in a rehearsal process inform your approach to this play?

[JB] I think it must. I don’t think it’s a conscious thing, but it just must. I’m actually surrounded by women who are in positions of power, and the power sits on them easily. (Look who I’m working with: Mandy and Carey.) So when I look at SHE, I expect her to have that power. She’s tough. Then you see this other side of her, which is essentially a fluttery teenage girl at times. Those two aspects of her vibrating so closely are really fun to watch.

[RW] In the past few years, it seems that the call for gender parity in season programming has gained some momentum—with organizations like The Kilroys [a collective of female theatre-makers advocating for more theatres to produce work written by women], for example. What do you think stands in the way of more female voices rising to the top?

[MG] As far as I’m concerned, nothing. I happen to be very drawn to stories that center on the female experience and interesting, complicated women who contain contradiction and inner life—and stories like that are often written by women. It’s been proven by a couple of watchdog groups, however, that there is a bias against plays written by women and, as a result, most theatre seasons feature only 20% of work authored by women. The work that has to happen going forward is to devise some way of exposing that bias and getting enough people to recognize it. Perhaps, then, we can train ourselves away from that bias.

[JB] There are actually quite a number of strong female artistic directors. That, in some ways, is not the issue. The issue is that when you look at seasons, there seems to be a predominance of male playwrights. That’s where the issue seems to be. And perhaps even with directors—you see that changing, but if you look at the numbers, it’s still out of whack. So, strangely, it doesn’t always trickle down. I think you have to add the element of the audience, too. Historically, all these white male playwrights have been showcased, so people look at a season and say, “I’ve seen their plays before, they’ve been very successful”—but when they see the name of some newbie female playwright, they assume it’s going to be a chick flick.

[CP] Or a screed, or didactic.

[RW] Do you think we’re on a trajectory toward greater inclusivity?

[CP] I think we will know that we’ve arrived when these stories are just as universal as any other stories. When you see Glengarry Glen Ross, you don’t think, “that’s a male universe.” You just think, “that’s a universal analysis of greed.” So we’ll have arrived when you can say, “Kinship, this is a play about power. Or desire. Or sexuality. Or obsession.” And not just, “this is a woman’s play.”