Latest / The Imperfect Impulse w/Bree O'Connor / Good Dialogue Ep. 2: Niki Hatzidis

Transcript

Good Dialogue Ep. 2: Niki Hatzidis · The Imperfect Impulse w/Bree O'Connor

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  [music]
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  SPEAKER_01: find that voice so that they can speak freely in a conversation?
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be really honest.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it has to do with my writing experience.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think it has to do with my actor training.
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  SPEAKER_01: Talk about that.
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  SPEAKER_00: I have had formal, like, classical training and then more, like, devised training.
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  SPEAKER_00: And in the way I was trained was character first, always.
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  SPEAKER_00: Always, always, always character first.
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  SPEAKER_00: Whether it was physicality,
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  SPEAKER_00: whether it was, like,
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  SPEAKER_00: Given circumstances in the play,
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  SPEAKER_00: like the Stanislavski Method,
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  SPEAKER_00: or having to build up a history that's maybe not as overt in the script,
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  SPEAKER_00: like finding the subtext in why these people are the way they are.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, being an actor,
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  SPEAKER_00: at least the way I think about it, is you kind of have to be a psychiatrist as well.
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  SPEAKER_00: You kind of have to think, okay, You know, what what is their birth order?
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  SPEAKER_00: Have they had trauma in their past?
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  SPEAKER_00: Like all these things to sort of bring a character off the page
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  SPEAKER_00: and make sure they're saying something as if they're saying it for the first time
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  SPEAKER_00: and that they're like, I mean, they could be lying, but truthful about it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Like honesty and openness and vulnerability and all those really wonderful
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  SPEAKER_00: and awful things that we have to do as actors and as people.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so I,
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  SPEAKER_00: from years before I ever wanted to be a playwright,
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  SPEAKER_00: I had to sit and really dissect a script.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if the script is good,
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  SPEAKER_00: you have so much you can play off and little sort of maybe Easter eggs you can sort
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  SPEAKER_00: of Run away with and really be like,
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  SPEAKER_00: okay, I think my character is like, this is their driving force.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is what they want.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it's because of X, Y, and Z.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the people that influence them are their parents and best friend and all this kind of stuff.
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  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you have to look at a line and be like, I have no idea what they mean by this.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I found most frustrating as an actor reading a script being like,
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't think real people talk like this.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, even in like the, even the best, even like, I am a Chekhov fan.
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  SPEAKER_00: I am.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm a stan.
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  SPEAKER_00: I love Chekhov.
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  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes you're kind of like, dude, what?
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  SPEAKER_00: Like, what?
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  SPEAKER_00: Like, why are your characters monologuing about how miserable they are?
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  SPEAKER_00: Like, no one likes that.
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  SPEAKER_00: And of course, I mean,
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  SPEAKER_00: I love Chekhov because he always believed that his characters were hilarious
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  SPEAKER_00: because they are so self-involved.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he feels the same way that we do about other characters.
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  SPEAKER_00: The way I like to work is I think about how I would approach the character as
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  SPEAKER_00: an actor and what would be the most interesting thing To play as an actor.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because I think in writing theater, your play has to be character driven.
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  SPEAKER_00: It
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  SPEAKER_00: has to be about the character and how they exist within the circumstances of the play.
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  SPEAKER_00: Once I've learned everything I can about a character,
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  SPEAKER_00: if they're a real person,
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  SPEAKER_00: like once I've learned everything I can about them,
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  SPEAKER_00: I then like think about the situations I want to put them in.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then like in the Manhattan Project,
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  SPEAKER_00: it's like, okay,
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  SPEAKER_00: They're on this like secret military base and they still have to,
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  SPEAKER_00: especially for the wives of the scientists,
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  SPEAKER_00: they still have to keep a home,
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  SPEAKER_00: sometimes go into work,
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  SPEAKER_00: feed and take care of their children and also support their husbands even
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  SPEAKER_00: when they have no idea what they're doing.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because they weren't allowed to know.
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  SPEAKER_00: So how does someone function in that?
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  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, okay, well,
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  SPEAKER_00: if I was this character,
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  SPEAKER_00: I'd be really concerned and I'd be really anxious and stressed.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, you hear about, oh, they're testing this thing.
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  SPEAKER_00: And you might be able to see it.
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  SPEAKER_01: And you have no idea what it is.
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  SPEAKER_00: But you have no idea what it is.
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  SPEAKER_00: And all you know is that they call it a gadget and it's supposed to stop the war.
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  SPEAKER_00: And you're going to be able to see what it does.
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  SPEAKER_00: No.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then what?
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  SPEAKER_00: The thing about the wives scene,
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  SPEAKER_00: which I got a lot,
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  SPEAKER_00: is about,
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  SPEAKER_00: it's way more fun to see how they talk about the minutiae of their day-to-day
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  SPEAKER_00: and how, like,
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  SPEAKER_00: all the, like,
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  SPEAKER_00: the little, like,
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  SPEAKER_00: rivalries that happen, the clickiness, maybe, the sisterhood, all these things.
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  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: I often got,
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  SPEAKER_00: I got some criticism being like,
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  SPEAKER_00: well, All they're talking about is their husbands and kids.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, yeah, because...
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  SPEAKER_01: That's their lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's their lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: And like, yeah, it doesn't pass the Bechdel test.
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  SPEAKER_01: Which I know you have thoughts about the Bechdel test.
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  SPEAKER_01: I do.
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  SPEAKER_00: But also like...
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  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, it's not supposed to.
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  SPEAKER_00: Like, the only reason they're there is because of their husbands.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know, the other women, maybe the women scientists and stuff, are there for other reasons.
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  SPEAKER_00: But even so, they were hand-selected by a man to come there.
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  SPEAKER_00: So there's no avoiding that effect on them.
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  SPEAKER_01: I think this comes into a conversation about our relationship to history
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  SPEAKER_01: and our relationship to whether we want to admit it or not.
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  SPEAKER_01: There was a very narrow pathway for women to walk.
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  SPEAKER_01: So how do...
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  SPEAKER_01: How do we be honest about that?
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  SPEAKER_01: How do women throughout history have, you know, push back against their traditional roles?
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  SPEAKER_01: How do they acquiesce?
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  SPEAKER_01: And how do we view that without judgment?
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's also acknowledging that women back then weren't I
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  SPEAKER_00: mean,
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  SPEAKER_00: people say like,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: the 60s feminists are the reason women have to go out and work and do like,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know, provide for themselves.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it's like women have had to do that forever.
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  SPEAKER_00: You're talking about a very specific class of women,
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  SPEAKER_00: but women have always had to go and provide for their families.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't think we can diminish the problems of women just because Their problems stem
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  SPEAKER_00: from marriage and children, because those are very, very real experiences.
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  SPEAKER_00: There are things we can disagree with, but we also have to look at their lives in context.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I think we had a lot of conversation with this.
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  SPEAKER_00: I really struggled to start Girls Go Away because of how angry I was for them.
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  SPEAKER_00: The rage I felt on behalf of these girls,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is why I wrote the ending first,
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  SPEAKER_00: because I'm like,
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  SPEAKER_00: this is where it's going to end up,
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  SPEAKER_00: because I'm going to give them some kind of authority and some kind of choice
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  SPEAKER_00: because they don't have any.
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  SPEAKER_00: In the U.S., we talk about choice when it comes to abortion and never when it comes to adoption.
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  SPEAKER_00: Mm.
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  SPEAKER_00: And
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  SPEAKER_00: it's acknowledging that even when adoption is a choice, it's really fucking hard.
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  SPEAKER_00: Like people who are pro-birth use adoption as an easy solution when...
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  SPEAKER_01: As if it doesn't impact our psyche or our physical wellness or...
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  SPEAKER_01: The rest of our lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: As if you're not still going through a pregnancy, which can be very traumatic on a body.
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  SPEAKER_00: Giving birth can be very traumatic.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then you have all these hormones going through you.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then you,
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  SPEAKER_00: even when you decide,
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  SPEAKER_00: I want to give this child away, that is still psychologically very, very difficult.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so...
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  SPEAKER_00: Learning about these,
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  SPEAKER_00: and I think on the periphery I knew about these home fraud unwed mothers,
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  SPEAKER_00: but I didn't realize,
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  SPEAKER_00: I guess,
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  SPEAKER_00: that they were,
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  SPEAKER_00: a lot of times they were literal children that were put there by their parents,
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  SPEAKER_00: more often than not pushed in there by their mothers
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  SPEAKER_00: because society would have something to say about it.
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  SPEAKER_00: It would ruin their reputation.
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  SPEAKER_00: It would
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  SPEAKER_00: stunt any future relationships with a man and future children.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so these girls were put into these homes involuntarily and not really told
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  SPEAKER_00: about their rights because it's something that's not in the play because
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  SPEAKER_00: the characters can't know more than they experience.
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  SPEAKER_00: Is that they had sort of a six-month break clause in the adoption
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  SPEAKER_00: where they could change their mind and get their babies back.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they just were never told about that.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: I had to put my politics aside,
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  SPEAKER_00: my feelings aside,
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  SPEAKER_00: and be like,
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  SPEAKER_00: these girls aren't angry so much because they don't really understand the scope
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  SPEAKER_00: of what's happening.
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  SPEAKER_00: They're only 15 and 16.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so I remember having that conversation of like,
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  SPEAKER_00: what do they talk about that isn't pregnancy and adoption and giving up their kid
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  SPEAKER_00: and what they want,
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  SPEAKER_00: whether or not they want to keep it, like what else is there to talk about?
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  SPEAKER_00: Because I really want to focus on this.
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  SPEAKER_00: However, these are well-rounded characters with full lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this is just a circumstance of their life.
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  SPEAKER_00: So what do they talk about?
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  SPEAKER_00: They talk about boys and makeup and what they want to be when they grow up and,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: what headband matches this dress and all this other,
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  SPEAKER_00: like, stuff while visibly pregnant and visibly very, very young.
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  SPEAKER_00: So...
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  SPEAKER_00: I think, I mean,
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  SPEAKER_00: in a roundabout way of answering your question,
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  SPEAKER_00: I think we can't ignore our feelings about the topic
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  SPEAKER_00: because that's usually why we're writing about it as playwrights.
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  SPEAKER_00: But we also have to put it into the context of what the characters are experiencing
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  SPEAKER_00: because we know more than our characters.
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  SPEAKER_01: I kind of want to focus on this because I think this is
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  SPEAKER_01: a really important information, especially for new playwrights.
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  SPEAKER_01: For, you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: young screenwriters that we don't spend our lives addressing the issue every second
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  SPEAKER_01: of the day.
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  SPEAKER_01: We don't, you know, you know, dad's dying.
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  SPEAKER_01: We're not talking about that with every single person that we talk to.
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  SPEAKER_01: We're not unloading to our barista office.
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  SPEAKER_01: You know, like that's like we have to live a life that has multiple concerns.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's just that's a circumstance that is acting on us.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's one of the mistakes I see a lot
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  SPEAKER_01: of young writers make is they dive so deeply into the,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know, the Chekhovian angst.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
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  SPEAKER_00: Oh, the angst.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's fun.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's so fun and it's so alluring.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: But I think without the other piece,
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  SPEAKER_01: without the headband and the dress,
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  SPEAKER_01: and without the,
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  SPEAKER_01: like, that boy's cute while you're eight and a half months pregnant.
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  SPEAKER_01: You know, that...
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  SPEAKER_01: The angst,
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  SPEAKER_01: I think,
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  SPEAKER_01: loses some of its power
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  SPEAKER_01: when you don't have the conversations that aren't directly
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  SPEAKER_01: about the thing.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because...
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but I like to avoid my problems until I actually have to deal with them.
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  SPEAKER_00: And you can't live there the whole time because it's just...
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  SPEAKER_00: It's way too much.
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  SPEAKER_00: And also, it's too much.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is probably a different conversation of what we owe the audience
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  SPEAKER_00: and how we take care of the audience.
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  SPEAKER_00: But also, you can't do that to an audience.
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  SPEAKER_00: Even Chekhov had some funny moments with all his angst.
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  SPEAKER_01: I mean, listen, the Seagull done correctly is hilarious.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because they're all ridiculous.
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  SPEAKER_01: They are so over the top and so self-involved.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: That their misery, like, you know, if we bring it too close to ourselves, it loses its humor.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: You know, like, I will say this forever.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: When I was at Circle in the Square,
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  SPEAKER_01: one of the,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: second year projects was like 90% Israeli cast of the Seagull and they got it.
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  SPEAKER_01: They were so funny because they were like,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: it's hard not
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  SPEAKER_01: to see them as,
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  SPEAKER_01: um, You know, I don't want to say cartoon in a pejorative sense.
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  SPEAKER_01: But I think that's the mirror that Chekhov was giving us.
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  SPEAKER_01: That if you miss the reflection, you miss the comedy.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like we talk in writer's group, we talk a lot about levity.
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  SPEAKER_00: A good director would say like, you can't start at a 10 and then stay there.
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  SPEAKER_00: Like you have to, you can't because you're, you're, people...
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  SPEAKER_00: First of all, you can't like mentally and physically do that.
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  SPEAKER_00: But second of all, at some point your audience will stop listening.
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  SPEAKER_00: You have to have those levels to sort of like let them sigh, exhale, laugh.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's a great way to make them relax.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then you can come back up.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: I think,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: you always have to be aware of
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  SPEAKER_01: when your audience's nervous system is completely overwhelmed and they can't listen
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  SPEAKER_01: to you anymore.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to trigger the audience's self-protective mechanism
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  SPEAKER_01: that makes them turn off the story because it's too much.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: You always want to keep your audience feeling like,
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  SPEAKER_01: hey, guys, you're going to be able to walk out of this room and go live your life.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, even the most gruesome crime dramas and films still have jokes in them.
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  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
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  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
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  SPEAKER_00: And when you're when you're writing about really serious things,
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  SPEAKER_00: I think it does you it it is a trap of like sitting it wanting to sit in it a lot
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  SPEAKER_00: because those topics are really important to you.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like, again,
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  SPEAKER_00: you wouldn't be writing it if like bodily autonomy is really,
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  SPEAKER_00: really important to me.
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  SPEAKER_00: When writing Girls Go Away, I really wanted to take care of those girls.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was really, really important to me.
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  SPEAKER_00: But I had to leave that rage and that anger.
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  SPEAKER_00: I could let the characters feel it when it was appropriate, but I had to leave that because...
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  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't have them live there the whole time.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
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  SPEAKER_00: That wouldn't be taking care of them very well.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I also think that it's an acknowledgement of reality.
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  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: I can honestly say in probably the most gruesome admission of my life is
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: that I have never laughed more than the,
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: four or five days in which I sat around the clock waiting for my mother to die.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: We laughed so hard.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
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  SPEAKER_01: like we really,
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: you know, it's like you have to cope and those things, they exist together.
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  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of the deliciousness is when you can find that in a story.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: Is that all of these things occupy this same space in the room.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that juxtaposition is like a really, it's a sweet spot in storytelling and in life.
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  SPEAKER_01: It brings me a little bit, it's going to be like a slightly hard transition.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: I really am dying to visit our conversation about O'Mary.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Oh!
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay, yeah.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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  We'll be right back.