
KLC: What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?
CC: Butter pecan. But I have a long and rocky-road history with ice cream of many varieties and flavors. Once an ice cream truck driver – the first “lady” driver, according to the newspaper in Cleveland -- I later started an ice cream store called The Vanilla Fudge Coop, which had 21 flavors that I tested frequently.
KLC: Where’s the coolest place you’ve ever traveled to and what was so cool about it?
CC: The police museum in Hungary, located in a stone-walled half-basement in Budapest, complete with display cases of long-barreled guns and stuffed dogs baring their teeth. Okay, that’s the creepiest not the coolest.
KLC: Name one movie you can quote and then quote it.
CC: Cool Hand Luke: “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”
KLC: Pick one: Eleanor Roosevelt, Angela Davis, or Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
CC: Angela Davis – wow. She synthesizes big picture insights in a way that few people, ever, can do.
KLC: The United States electoral process is _______________________.
CC: endangered by right-wingers and their insidious lies, hidden financing, computer rigging, sneaky court challenges, strict voter ID laws, disenfranchisement schemes and reactionary agenda. Not that I have much of an opinion about it.
KLC: What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever done to get someone’s attention?
CC: I drove 16 hours from Atlanta to New York and faked my way past security to talk to the editor-in-chief of Time magazine.
KLC: If you had the opportunity to patent a brand new product, what might that be?
CC: I have a prototype already. It’s a hand-held tube with glitter inside and flying ribbons at the end. When waved in the right direction, it dispenses perfect justice.
KLC: Which of the following is least likely to ever exist: bigfoot, elves, or government regulation on Wall Street?
CC: Leading question! They all exist in the minds of the inventive.
KLC: Wild card question! Have you ever won a medal, trophy, ribbon, etc. at something that had absolutely nothing to do with writing? What was it??
CC: I won the prize for the potato sack jumping contest at Nela Park (in Ohio), two years in a row.
KLC: Can you share something about yourself that no one has ever asked you about in an interview before?
CC: I’ve experienced near death three times: once from an averted car crash in Colorado; once from sudden illness that landed me in the emergency room; and once from being sucked under an Army Corps of Engineers dredge boat in the middle of the Mississippi River (I was in a canoe).
Cindy Cooper’s plays have been performed in New York at Primary Stages, The Women’s Project (How She Played the Game), Wings Theatre (Slow Burn; Strange Light), Art & Work, Starfish (Lincoln Center Clark Studio) (Beyond Stone), Theatreworks USA (The World at Your Fingertips), Museum of Tolerance, Anne Frank Center USA (Silence Not, A Love Story), EST New Works, and in Chicago, Minneapolis, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Buffalo, Reno, Montreal, Budapest, Jerusalem, Helsinki, and more. Her plays are published in 16 books and she’s won awards from Pen & Brush, Samuel French Play Festival, Malibu Theater, Nantucket Theatre, the City of Providence, NARAL, others. Cooper is the founder of Words of Choice, a theater company devoted to reproductive justice, is an affiliate at the Playwrights’ Center, and a two-time Jerome Fellow. She lives in New York City, and when not writing plays, works as a journalist and nonfiction author. Website: www.cyncooperwriter.net
CC: Butter pecan. But I have a long and rocky-road history with ice cream of many varieties and flavors. Once an ice cream truck driver – the first “lady” driver, according to the newspaper in Cleveland -- I later started an ice cream store called The Vanilla Fudge Coop, which had 21 flavors that I tested frequently.
KLC: Where’s the coolest place you’ve ever traveled to and what was so cool about it?
CC: The police museum in Hungary, located in a stone-walled half-basement in Budapest, complete with display cases of long-barreled guns and stuffed dogs baring their teeth. Okay, that’s the creepiest not the coolest.
KLC: Name one movie you can quote and then quote it.
CC: Cool Hand Luke: “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”
KLC: Pick one: Eleanor Roosevelt, Angela Davis, or Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
CC: Angela Davis – wow. She synthesizes big picture insights in a way that few people, ever, can do.
KLC: The United States electoral process is _______________________.
CC: endangered by right-wingers and their insidious lies, hidden financing, computer rigging, sneaky court challenges, strict voter ID laws, disenfranchisement schemes and reactionary agenda. Not that I have much of an opinion about it.
KLC: What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever done to get someone’s attention?
CC: I drove 16 hours from Atlanta to New York and faked my way past security to talk to the editor-in-chief of Time magazine.
KLC: If you had the opportunity to patent a brand new product, what might that be?
CC: I have a prototype already. It’s a hand-held tube with glitter inside and flying ribbons at the end. When waved in the right direction, it dispenses perfect justice.
KLC: Which of the following is least likely to ever exist: bigfoot, elves, or government regulation on Wall Street?
CC: Leading question! They all exist in the minds of the inventive.
KLC: Wild card question! Have you ever won a medal, trophy, ribbon, etc. at something that had absolutely nothing to do with writing? What was it??
CC: I won the prize for the potato sack jumping contest at Nela Park (in Ohio), two years in a row.
KLC: Can you share something about yourself that no one has ever asked you about in an interview before?
CC: I’ve experienced near death three times: once from an averted car crash in Colorado; once from sudden illness that landed me in the emergency room; and once from being sucked under an Army Corps of Engineers dredge boat in the middle of the Mississippi River (I was in a canoe).
Cindy Cooper’s plays have been performed in New York at Primary Stages, The Women’s Project (How She Played the Game), Wings Theatre (Slow Burn; Strange Light), Art & Work, Starfish (Lincoln Center Clark Studio) (Beyond Stone), Theatreworks USA (The World at Your Fingertips), Museum of Tolerance, Anne Frank Center USA (Silence Not, A Love Story), EST New Works, and in Chicago, Minneapolis, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Buffalo, Reno, Montreal, Budapest, Jerusalem, Helsinki, and more. Her plays are published in 16 books and she’s won awards from Pen & Brush, Samuel French Play Festival, Malibu Theater, Nantucket Theatre, the City of Providence, NARAL, others. Cooper is the founder of Words of Choice, a theater company devoted to reproductive justice, is an affiliate at the Playwrights’ Center, and a two-time Jerome Fellow. She lives in New York City, and when not writing plays, works as a journalist and nonfiction author. Website: www.cyncooperwriter.net