Kara Lee Corthron
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Things  I Think About

Irregular bloggings and my series of 

Q & A's with Writers about things OTHER than writing! 


Because writers are interesting people, which is probably why they write.

Q & A's with Writers about things OTHER than Writing                                          21 (we can drink!): Tira Palmquist

1/30/2015

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KLC: What's your favorite flavor of ice cream?
TP: In short… anything chocolate. That said, the most memorable cup of ice cream ever was Mexican Chocolate Ice Cream from Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream (back when it was just Jeni’s, and she had a small stand in the North Market in Columbus Ohio.)

Eating that ice cream was this crazy good sensory experience: you eat a spoonful, and get these immediate hits of cinnamon in the chocolate – and then the chili hits you, and your whole mouth starts to heat up. What do you do? Take another spoon of sweet, cold deliciousness to cool your mouth down, and enjoy the cinnamon and chocolate, at which point your mouth starts to heat up again, so you need to take another cold spoonful of ice cream… and… There you go. A cycle of deliciousness.

KLC: Where’s the coolest place you’ve ever traveled to and what was so cool about it?
TP: One of my most memorable vacations was to Mexico City. Good golly, that’s a beautiful (and sometimes ugly) place. My daughter and I (both incredibly pale redheads) went just about everywhere we could walk in old town Mexico City, and got a lot of surprised looks. (“There’s…. two of them…?”) It’s also where I learned the slang “guera.” (Look it up.) We were the two gueras gamely taking the subway in the D.F., and trying not to look too completely out of place. (Though we were.) What’s so cool about the D.F. is that it’s just so freaking old, and full of gorgeous art and architecture and history. It’s hard not to go anywhere in the city and not be struck by all of these things.

KLC: Name one movie you can quote and then quote it.
TP: In Bruges.
Ray: “Bruges in a shit hole.”
Ken “Bruges is not a shit hole.”
Ray: “Bruges
 is a shit hole.”

Harry’s wife (as he’s beating the phone into pieces): Harry! It’s an inanimate object!

Harry: You’re an inanimate fucking object!

KLC: Pick one: Eleanor Roosevelt, Angela Davis, or Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
TP: Do I have to?

KLC: Yes.
TP: OK, then. Eleanor Roosevelt, because she didn’t let being first lady hold her down.

KLC: The United States electoral process is _______________________.
TP: …a ridiculous fucking sham. Seriously, we should be ashamed of ourselves.

KLC: What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever done to get someone’s attention?
TP: I had just transferred to the University of Iowa, and I had this incredible crush on this guy in a couple of my classes. He was good looking, and funny, and popular with all the cool kids – so… I gave him a book. (A copy of Franny and Zooey.) It must have worked, because he married me.

KLC: If you had the opportunity to patent a brand new product, what might that be?
TP: At the moment, I’m wishing I had a dog umbrella, because it is seriously raining like a bitch right now, and my big dog does not love it.
Or this: 
A little missile-delivery device that lets you fire small, non-lethal, super-sticky decals at the bumpers of assholes in traffic. Sort of marking them, publically, for being a shit of a driver. So, you know, you know who to pay attention to and avoid when you’re driving. Really, that’s a terrible idea, but when I’m frustrated with assholes on the freeway in Southern California (which is, like, all the time), I find I often fantasize about this Asshole Marking Device.


KLC: Which of the following is least likely to ever exist: bigfoot, elves, or government regulation on Wall Street?
TP: Elves. 
I mean -- seriously. Elves?


KLC: Wild card question!  If you have a signature dish that no one makes better than you, tell us what is and tell us the secret ingredient. (Hint: you may lie.)
TP: I bake a lot of tasty things – but the one thing that people request that I make more than anything else is this fabulous chocolate cake that has about a pound of chocolate in it. It’s seriously the shit. No secrets, really, just getting good ingredients and following the recipe.

KLC: Can you share something about yourself that no one has ever asked you about in an interview before?
TP: I tend to be a pretty open book about a lot of my life… but…
I really love music. I mean, if I had to do it all over again, I’d focus more on music, and learn to play more instruments. My secret desire (and, obviously, not so secret now) is to be a singer in a band. I’d be a hell of a back-up singer because I do harmonies really well. OK. That sounds really egotistical, but it's true. I could sing harmonies (I mean, I could pick them out or make them up) before I could read. I have a memory of being really tiny -- like, two? three? -- and singing harmonies with a song on the radio. I didn't realize what I was doing until my mom pointed it out to me. I thought that was something everybody could do.


  
TIRA PALMQUIST’s plays include TWO DEGREES, TEN MILE LAKE (Serenbe Playhouse), AGE OF BEES (Madlab Theater), AND THEN THEY FELL, among others. TWO DEGREES most recently was part of the PlayLabs at the Great Plains Theater conference, the Road Theatre’s Summer Playwrights Festival and then in the Artemisia Theater’s Fall Festival in Chicago, IL. AND THEN THEY FELL was workshopped at the UMass New Play Lab in April 2014.  AGE OF BEES, which premiered at MadLab Theater (Best Original Work by the Other Papers "Best of 2012” list), will be in the 2015 season at Tesseract Theater in St. Louis.  Her work has been developed by 9Thirty Theater, Theater of Note, EST-LA, Seven Devils and The Inkwell. She teaches at UCI as well as the Orange County School of the Arts, and is a member of the Antaeus Theatre’s Playwrights Unit, the Dramatists Guild and EST-LA’s Playwrights Unit.
 

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Q & A's with Writers about things OTHER than Writing                                   Veinte: Virginia Grise

1/27/2015

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KLC: What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?
VG: Pistachio.

KLC: Where’s the coolest place you’ve ever traveled to and what was so cool about it?
VG: I’ve travelled to a lot of cool places including Rwanda, Uganda, Amsterdam, London, Hawaii (where I danced with my high school dance team), most of Mexico, the US southwest (I mean the rest of Mexico) to name just a few but I have to say the coolest place I’ve ever travelled is Chiapas, Mexico. I was there for the Intercontinental Encuentro for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism (in the Zapatista communities of Oventic and La Realidad). Being with these autonomous communities in resistance changed my life – I want to learn how to value the Word with that much dignity and to live, dance, laugh, dream that big.

KLC: Name one movie you can quote and then quote it.
VG: Nacho Libre. “Get that corn outta my face!”

KLC: Pick one: Eleanor Roosevelt, Angela Davis, or Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
VG: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Only because I’ve met Angela Davis.

KLC: The United States electoral process is _______________________.
VG: just wack. I don’t believe in this current two party system nor do I believe that it serves (or even cares about) my needs or the needs of my community.

KLC: What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever done to get someone’s attention?
VG: I once had a crush on someone and went swimming with them every morning at 6am for a month before I finally admitted that I am not a morning person and I just wanted to spend time with them.

KLC: If you had the opportunity to patent a brand new product, what might that be?
VG: If I could patent a brand new product…huh…I’m not good at science…let’s see…um…um….uh…pistachio ice cream. Wait. What’s the question?

KLC: Which of the following is least likely to ever exist: bigfoot, elves, or government regulation on Wall Street?
VG: Government regulation on Wall Street. I believe in bigfoot, elves and angels.

KLC: Can you share something about yourself that no one has ever asked you about in an interview before?
VG: Nobody ever asks about what you fear. What is your biggest fear? My biggest fear is going crazy. This is true. Unfortunately I have watched too many of our elders, artists and organizers, go crazy. I hope that I figure out how to navigate and to continue to find joy in this world (as crazy as it is) with out going crazy myself.  


From panzas to prisons, from street theatre to large-scale multimedia performances, from princess to chafa – Virginia Grise writes plays that are set in bars without windows, barrio rooftops, and lesbian bedrooms. A recipient of the Whiting Writer’s Award, Princess Grace Award in Theatre Directing and the Yale Drama Series Award, her published work includes blu (Yale University Press), The Panza Monologues (University of Texas Press), and an edited volume of Zapatista communiqués titled Conversations with Don Durito (Autonomedia Press). She earned her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY- where she still writes plays about Tejas. www.virginiagrise.com


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Q & A's with Writers about Things OTHER than Writing                                          Hey Nineteen: Jacob Juntunen

1/23/2015

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KLC: What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?
JJ: When I was young, my Dad would take me to Baskin Robbins where I would get a cup with a scoop of peanut butter and chocolate and a scoop of "daquiri ice." I'm not sure exactly what "daquiri ice" was, except an extremely bright blue sorbet. Nor am I certain why I thought it went well with peanut butter and chocolate. But that was always my favorite.

KLC: Where’s the coolest place you’ve ever traveled to and what was so cool about it?
JJ: By far it was my trip in 2000 to the Cricoteka, the archive of Polish theatre auteur Tadeusz Kantor, in Krakow. At that point, it was an archive of his nightmarescape props -- including a skeleton horse on wheels -- in a dim, brick medieval cellar. You could pay your couple bucks, go down there, and commune alone with the ghosts of Kantor's theatrical séances. The Cricoteka still exists, but is now brightly lit, modernized, and most of the important props are either on display at the new Kantor museum or are in storage for scholars. 

KLC: Name one movie you can quote and then quote it.
JJ: Bill Murray's The Razor's Edge: "I'm doing fine for me."

KLC: Pick one: Eleanor Roosevelt, Angela Davis, or Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
JJ: I pick Naomi Wallace instead. Reading her plays showed me a how theatricality, politics, and feminism could all exist onstage without didacticism. Slaughter City is the bar I hold my own work up to. And now, thanks to your blog, I know she likes hedgehogs as well, which only endears me to her more.

KLC: The United States electoral process is _______________________.
JJ: built so men who own capital win it, so it shouldn't surprise anyone when that is how it works. I mean, come on, the guys who designed the process literally owned their children (I'm looking at you, Jefferson). Why would they create an ethical election system?

KLC: What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever done to get someone’s attention?
JJ: I met my wife, Meghan, because a mutual friend brought her to a party I was having. Meghann left rather early, before I had much of a chance to talk to her, and I tried to get her to stay by offering her pie and a chance to look at my Tadeusz Kantor books. She didn't stay, but I did make an impression. A good or a bad one, though?

KLC: If you had the opportunity to patent a brand new product, what might that be?
JJ: An international transporter, so one could travel the world quickly and environmentally. I love international travel, and have learned more about myself and life by visiting other countries than by any other means. But the process is always exhausting, and the fossil fuels used in long-haul flights are a problem.

KLC: Which of the following is least likely to ever exist: bigfoot, elves, or government regulation on Wall Street?
JJ: Of course I want to say government regulation of Wall Street, and, while I tend to be extremely pessimistic, at least men can't legally own their children in the U.S. anymore (see #5 above).

KLC: Can you share something about yourself that no one has ever asked you about in an interview before? 
JJ: I had open heart surgery when I was four years old, and, in the hospital, was given the book Amos and Boris about a mouse who falls off his boat and is saved by a whale. The book includes a monologue by the mouse after he falls off the boat wondering what death is like. Later in the book, the whale is beached and, before he's saved by the mouse, he, too, wonders about death. Reading this as a tiny child before my own very serious operation, I think, has led to my obsession with death in my own writing.



Jacob Juntunen is the head of the MFA playwriting program at SIU (Southern Illinois University), as well as SIU's unique PhD playwriting program. His plays are meant for those “who want to leave the theatre changed and moved,” as one Chicago critic described. He recently wrote See Him? to participate in the Belarusian Dream Theater, a consortium of eighteen theaters in thirteen countries producing plays to raise awareness about human rights violations in Belarus. His latest play, In the Shadow of his Language lays bare the hidden dowry of academic success and was a semi-finalist for the O’Neill Center National Playwrights’ Conference; a semi-finalist for the Princess Grace Playwriting Fellowship; and a finalist for the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Award. Shadow has enjoyed two staged readings in Chicago, another at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre, and a workshop off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons. His play Saddam’s Lions--published in Plays for Two (Vintage)—examines the disquieting memories of an African-American female Iraq War veteran and her struggles to come to terms with war-time trauma. Jacob based this play on interviews with a veteran.

More information at JacobJuntunen.com and short plays at RiposteToTheWorld.blogspot.com.


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Q & A's with Writers about Things OTHER than Writing                                        18: Anthony Ellison

1/20/2015

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KLC: What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream? 
AE: That's a tough one. Hmm, I used to be a huge fan of Rocky Road, but that was when I was 4 or 5, and obviously, now, I look back on why I won't go anywhere NEAR Rocky Road, and then I just cry. So let's move on. 

KLC: Where’s the coolest place you’ve ever traveled to and what was so cool about it? 
AE: I'm tempted to lie and make up a story about South America or Austrailia or Europe, but I've never been to any of those places. The coolest places I've traveled would have to be the bus tour of Rome, Florence, Venice, London, Paris, Ireland and Ferarra...my mom and I went together and it was one of the most eye opening experiences I've ever had. Wait, oopsie, looks like I HAVE been to Europe ;) - a LOT of it too ;) - Yeah, let's just say I have a mind that kicks and screams when it's idle. It's why I'm such a good writer too.

KLC: Name one movie you can quote and then quote it. 
AE: Braveheart: "The English are TOO MANY! I'm takin' me sword, and I'm goin' home."

KLC: Pick one: Eleanor Roosevelt, Angela Davis, or Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
AE: Eleanor Roosevelt - only because she's the one with polio right?

KLC: The United States electoral process is _______________________.
AE: FOR WINNERS!

KLC: What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever done to get someone’s attention? 
AE: Oh Dear. Probably my homework. Considering I've spent the better half of my life living up to my sister's accomplishments, I decided to start learning instead to become disgustingly intelligent. Don't worry, she'd never read this, because it would mean acknowledging my existence, did that answer you're question? It's complicated.

KLC: If you had the opportunity to patent a brand new product, what might that be? 
AE: I had this idea for this long stick, right? Okay so there's this long, flimsy stick and it has these little loops on it, all along the length of the stick, and then through those loops you could string something through the center of those loops, like a string, actually. and then what you can do is find a way to collect and wind up that string at the bottom of the stick. Then on the other end of the string you get some sort of food, or "temptations" for fish, that are on a hook, and you throw the string out into a lake or a pond or and river and "tempt" fish to eat, because when they DO eat the fish, they end up eating the hook too, and then you wind up the string towards yourself, with the fish on it, and then the fish is yours to keep as a pet. I call it the Tempting Stick, or Fish tempter or Temptation River Stick - BUT if I see you've taken this idea, Kara, I swear I will have lawyers all over you in half a New York minute.

KLC: Which of the following is least likely to ever exist: bigfoot, elves, or government regulation on Wall Street? 
AE: Hmmmm, I put Bigfoot and elves into my thoughts before I go to bed at night, and not by choice. Truth is, when I was 5 years old (see question 1) I had a questionable night of enormous sensuality, involving myself, Bigfoot, and elf, and Eleanor Roosevelt (see question 4 - I just didn't feel like #4 was the time or the place for me to tell this story). It was a musty collage of pain, pleasure, and presidential status.  So...to answer your loaded question, Kara, considering I fell in love with Bigfoot, I currently have a restraining order on an elf that fell in love with me, I'm gonna have to say Government regulation on Wall Street is never gonna happen, because too many dudes are makin' too much money to ever let that happen.

KLC: Can you share something about yourself that no one has ever asked you about in an interview before? 
AE: I'm terribly lonely. Always. I don't understand friendship. Probably never will....thanks for bringing it up, Kara.    



Anthony Ellison spent 10 years in Chicago, writing, acting, directing and improvising. The North Star was produced at Chemically Imbalanced Theater in Chicago (2012) and at The Drilling Company in New York City, produced by Standing Panda (2013). Other full-length productions: Texas Sheen andGuillotine, at Chemically Imbalanced Theater. HORSE! and Team Sweet, The Good Kind Of Pain and Blind Stinkin’ were his sketch revues at Second City Chicago. Shitbrick Merlot, We Killed The Care Bears produced at Annoyance Theater. His ten minute plays have found homes at American Theater Company, Chicago Dramatists, Stage Left and Grin Theatre in Liverpool U.K.


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Q & A's with Writers about Things OTHER than Writing                                  17th Addition: Chanel Glover

1/14/2015

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KLC: What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?
CG: I unfortunately do not eat dairy, so my options are limited. I just recently discovered an almond milk ice cream and the best flavor is Cappuccino Swirl.

KLC: Where’s the coolest place you’ve ever traveled to and what was so cool about it?
CG: Venice, Italy. The racism was far from cool, but the delicious eats made up for it. I’ll never eat shrimp scampi again, unless I go back to that tiny basement restaurant my brother and I discovered while playing hooky from our parents.



KLC: Name one movie you can quote and then quote it.
CG: Crooklyn: “1, 2, 3 / the devil’s after me / 4, 5, 6 / he’s always throwing bricks / 7, 8, 9 / he misses every time / hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah / Amen”

KLC: Pick one: Eleanor Roosevelt, Angela Davis, or Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
CG: Angela Davis

KLC: The United States electoral process is: 
CG: formality bullshit

KLC: What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever done to get someone’s attention?
CG: I mostly want to be away from attention, so…

KLC: If you had the opportunity to patent a brand new product, what might that be?
CG: Some kind of way to organize all of the pages in magazines and books that I’ve doggy-eared so I can actually come back to those pages!

KLC: Which of the following is least likely to ever exist: bigfoot, elves, or government regulation on Wall Street?
CG: Gov’t regulation of anything that makes big money.

KLC: Can you share something about yourself that no one has ever asked you about in an interview before? 
CG: I have an extreme passion for puzzling. I actually glue up the completed puzzles and frame them. 


Chanel Glover is a ‘trained’ lawyer who dabbles in playwriting, and desires most to be the first Black (Lesbian) Superwoman to rid the world of menacing stereotypes with just the stroke of her pencil. In May 2014, she completed an MFA in playwriting at Ohio University where her full-length plays How to Eat an Oreo, Black as the Dirt and They’re Not Rappers have received staged readings at Ohio University’s Seabury Quinn, Jr. Playwrights’ Festival in April 2014, April 2013 and June 2012, respectively. She currently serves as one of six playwrights in terraNova Collective’s Grounbreakers Playwrights Group. For more on her adventures visit: http://chanelandrow.wix.com/chanelandrow.

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The Isht that Dare Not Speak Its Name

1/12/2015

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It’s not something many of us talk about easily. It’s not something many of us even like thinking about. Bringing it up can cause serious discomfort, awkwardness, and resentment. And trying to have a civilized, informed discussion about it is still seen as taboo in a lot of circles in our society. What is the It I keep referring to? Money.

For some unexplainable reason, I have long believed that talking openly about money issues was a big no-no. Akin to airing your family’s dirty laundry or admitting to being a bed wetter. This is ridiculous. I’m just gonna say it right now: I’m broke. I’m broke as hell. It’s true and I know I’m not alone. Without the support of my husband and sister this last year, I’d probably be in a shelter. I work very hard at what I do. I’m a playwright and teacher. I find my work generally fulfilling and on a good day, super and I barely have anything in my bank account to show for it. And this is painful for me to talk about.

Why the shame? Don’t panic: I’m not gonna go all Karl Marx on you right now; I’ll leave that to economic scholars and the late, great Carson McCullers. But I will say this. Having lived in a capitalist society since birth, I am incapable of looking at my life as an artist and professional and then looking at my bank balance, without some awful, nasty voice in the back of my head shouting: This is your fault! I probably don’t need to say this, but hearing such a criticism isn’t altogether helpful. This comes from the flawed belief that somehow we all began on a level playing field, we all understood early on which careers were lucrative and which ones weren’t, and we made our decisions regardless of how sound those decisions were. Now my prefrontal cortex knows that this is bullshit. If all things were equal and I decided my path in life based solely on money-making potential, my choice to become a writer could be considered clinically insane or sadomasochistic. I’m grateful to say I’m neither of those things...that I know of. Despite how illogical this type of thinking is in reality, my inner critic believes in it and lobs such useful questions at me as “Why didn’t you go to law school?” “Why couldn’t you have been better at math?” or more recently, “Why didn’t you move to L.A. after your TV job?” “Why did you turn down that full-time professor position in the middle of nowhere?” “Why didn’t you write that pilot for Macauley Culkin when he asked you to?” Yeah. Had I followed any one of these paths, my financial situation would probably be a fuck of a lot better. 

Or not. Who the Hell knows?

















The thing is? At the time when those questions were real ones in my life (OK being better at math was never really up to me), I didn’t want those things. I wanted my freedom. That sounds a bit—dramatic, but it’s entirely true. I wanted the freedom to make my own writing schedule. To do fun shit like going to residencies in Scotland and Iceland and California and New Hampshire. But mostly? I’ve never wanted to worry about freakin’ money.

But that catches up with you. It’s January. It’s 2015. I’ve been living in this city for fifteen years now. Long enough to have given birth to a high-school freshmen. I have some choices to make. Do I stay here for another fifteen? Do I continue on this path? Or cut my way through some deep woods to find a new one? Is the answer obvious? If you know me, you probably know that I recently wrote a young-adult novel called The Distance From Me to You. It was time for a new journey (notice it’s still a writer’s journey; I can only change so much). My book agent, the brilliant and accomplished Laurie Liss, is currently trying to find a publisher for it. I don’t know if this venture will prove financially fruitful. But my hope is that by finding new ways to be creatively fruitful, the proverbial vault of gold out there in the ether somewhere will slowly start to open. I’m also trying something new: I’m doing my best to police my cynicism. To approach the concept of money with openness instead of fear and loathing. And though I may work as many hours in a given week as someone with a standard full-time job and get paid far less--I’m going to start looking at those hours as positive energy flowing toward that aforementioned vault. I’ve heard that abundance begets abundance. Why not? I have the freedom to lament the lack of fairness of my situation or to hope for the opportunities to acquire all that I need.

So I’m saying it. I’m broke and I’m not ashamed! I’ve made choices that didn’t exactly lead me to riches, but they did lead me to some irreplaceable experiences and people that I’m grateful to have in my life. I’ll say this, too: I kinda love being a freewheeling artist but that doesn’t mean I have to accept poverty. And neither do you. 

You know what else? We need to fucking talk about money. Let’s break the silence.





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Q & A's with Writers about things OTHER than Writing                                           Sweet Sixteen: Catherine Weingarten

1/8/2015

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KLC: What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?
CW: I’m a mint chocolate chip fan girl.  I really go for or anything mint.  During Christmas they have this peppermint flavored ice cream and I usually get so excited that I don’t really know what to do with myself.

KLC: Where’s the coolest place you’ve ever traveled to and what was so cool about it?
CW: In high school I had a good looking French exchange student named Jean Karim and during spring break I lived with him and his family in Lyon.  It was so pretty there I felt like I was in some Swedish fairytale about a good looking blonde milkmaid chick who danced on mountains and fed goats fo fun.  So yeah, I mostly felt cool cause I hung out with a good looking French dude all the time and got to wander the French countryside which is way too attractive.

KLC: Name one movie you can quote and then quote it.
CW: Ugh I suck at quoting movies, but I did recently go with a lot of other MFA playwrights at OhioU to see “Elf” at the local hipster movie theater, and Will Ferrell has that line “Smiling is my favorite!”, which is pretty amazing, so yeah I remembered that!

KLC: Pick one: Eleanor Roosevelt, Angela Davis, or Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
CW: Eleanor Roosevelt because she was high class!

KLC: The United States electoral process is _______________________.
CW: confusing

KLC: What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever done to get someone’s attention?
CW: In high school I was super into this guy James who had a blonde curly fro which was so attractive it made me want to die.  So I decided to take my yearbook photo and write my phone number on it to win his affections.  Special side note:  In high school I took this infamous yearbook pic where I wore red lipstick; which people didn’t really do since I grew up in a pretty preppy and innocent PA suburb.   So yeah, I gave a dude my alt yearbook photo and yeah, it did not go too well, he mostly just ran away.

KLC: If you had the opportunity to patent a brand new product, what might that be?
CW: I’m super into body positivity and self empowerment for young women, so if I could make a new product I would love to target pre-teen girls and have some sort of girly jewelry box that you can smack and it’ll say something inspirational like “Yo mom be wrong, GURL, you looking fine!” or “No one should ever dump you because you have the biggest heart a chick could want!”.

KLC: Which of the following is least likely to ever exist: bigfoot, elves, or government regulation on Wall Street?
CW: I’ll say elves because that other hip playwright on your blog, Claire Drobot, said it.

KLC: Can you share something about yourself that no one has ever asked you about in an interview before? 
CW: Christmas time can be a rough time for me since I’m a Jewish chick, so sometimes I have long fantasy sequences about me decorating a humongous gingerbread house with a random hot dude while babies sing happy Christmas songs and dance around us in glee.


Catherine Weingarten is a recent Bennington College graduate and a playwriting MFA candidate at Ohio University. Her short works have been done at such theaters as Ugly Rhino Productions, Less Than Rent, Last Frontier Theater Conference, Fresh Ground Pepper, and Nylon Fusion Collective. Her full length plays include: Are you ready to get PAMPERED!?, Recycling Sexy, A Roller Rink Temptation (which premiered at the New Orleans Fringe Festival this November) and Pineapple Upside Down Cake: a virgin play. She is the Playwright in Residence for “Realize your Beauty inc” which promotes positive body image for kids by way of theater arts. She was a recent member of Abingdon Theater’s playwrights group and New Perspective’s “Women’s Work” short play lab.    

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Q & A's with Writers about things OTHER than Writing                                    Part (Twenty) Fifteen: Charlotte Miller

1/5/2015

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KLC: What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?
CM: rocky road.

KLC: Where’s the coolest place you’ve ever traveled to and what was so cool about it?
CM: I haven't gotten to travel as much as I would like to, I like a lot of places as long as they're warm. I went to Panama about nine years ago and that was beautiful, to be able to go to the beach and the mountains and the pacific and the atlantic all in a ten day span was kind of nuts. 

KLC: Name one movie you can quote and then quote it.
CM: Wayne's World, Garth: "If you're gonna spew, spew into this." 

KLC:Pick one: Eleanor Roosevelt, Angela Davis, or Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
CM: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

KLC: The United States electoral process is _______________________.
CM: A bummer.

KLC: What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever done to get someone’s attention?
CM: Hide.

KLC: If you had the opportunity to patent a brand new product, what might that be?
CM: Some kind of mini-squeegee for my glasses when it rains.

KLC: Which of the following is least likely to ever exist: bigfoot, elves, or government regulation on Wall Street?
CM: Government regulation on Wall Street.

KLC: Can you share something about yourself that no one has ever asked you about in an interview before? 
CM: I was born with a clubbed foot, which means my foot was bent inward like a crescent, so I had to wear a cast when I was a baby and then these bar-shoe things. They were orthopedic shoes made out of wood and leather that were connected by a metal bar to keep them straight. I learned to walk in them and I slept in them for a little while which would make my ankles bleed. They came off when I was 3 and now I have two straight feet. 


Charlotte Miller is a Brooklyn-based playwright and performer. Her plays include Barn (Rising Phoenix Rep), Worst Year Ever (NY Fringe Festival), Joan's Boutique (The Spectrum), Favorites (Rising Phoenix Rep), Rocks (Tank Theater), and Raising Jo (PLAYPENN 2010) among others. Her plays have been read/workshopped with Rattlestick, Labyrinth, the Flea, PLAYPENN, and the Peoples Light Theater. She is a proud member of Rising Phoenix Rep and the Actors Studio Playwrights/Directors Unit.


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    Kara Lee Corthron

    See my bio page if you'd like to know more about me.

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