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 Worth Mentioning:
An interview with playwright Bruce Norris
by Elissa Goetschius, Dramaturg
For over a decade, Bruce Norris has worked with Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago where his intelligent and biting plays have spurred great debate. THE UNMENTIONABLES marks his theatrical debut in Washington, DC. Before rehearsals began at Woolly Mammoth, dramaturg Elissa Goetschius corresponded with Bruce to learn more about his career, his recent trip to Africa, and the development of this, his most recent play.
Elissa Goetschius: THE UNMENTIONABLES was your fifth play to premiere at Steppenwolf, correct? When did you first start working with them?
Bruce Norris: I actually worked at Steppenwolf as an actor back in about '93 or '94, but not until 1999 as a playwright. Martha Lavey, the current Artistic Director, is an actress whom I had known while she was a PhD candidate at Northwestern. When my first play was produced in Chicago (by the now-defunct Remains Theatre) Martha appeared in that production. Years later, when she was developing a new plays program at Steppenwolf, she was generous enough to invite me to write under commission for them. That led to the production of a play called The Infidel back in – I believe – 2000, and we have continued to work together for the last seven years.
EG: How has having an artistic home in Chicago allowed your writing to grow?
BN: It’s a hard question to answer because, since it’s the only situation I’ve known, I can only say what I’ve observed other playwrights being forced to endure, such as endless “workshops” of plays that result in no production; the competitive New York market where you live and die according to critical response; and the difficulties of having to “shop” your play around like a traveling salesman. I suppose, then, that I’d say that working in affiliation with an established company is the best possible situation to be in, since it protects you – to some extent – from the psychological damage of pursuing a playwriting career. Plus, they have terrific actors, a fantastic theatre in which to stage plays, and great audiences.
EG: You’ve acted both onstage and in several films. How would you say your experiences as an actor have shaped the way you write?
BN: In the sense that I’m inclined to tell stories through character and behavior rather than through literary flourish or stylistic innovation. For me, it’s a difficult enough task to actually express the idea that I want to express without the additional challenge of having to remake theater as we know it each time. An audience enters the theatre with a given set of tools, and it’s not my task to re-educate them. I like to speak in the language a theatre audience already knows.
EG: Would you say THE UNMENTIONABLES is a new direction in your writing or does it continue to explore some themes from your earlier plays?
BN: I think it’s basically a re-write of my play The Pain and the Itch, with a somewhat wider lens. That’s something that I tend to do unconsciously, to re-write myself, which I guess means that it takes me a while to get something out of my system.
EG: What has the audience reaction been to this play?
BN: Audiences always have a lot to say if you raise questions about the way they regard themselves. It’s very much like The Pain and the Itch, which also concerns a particular brand of American hypocrisy (of the domestic variety). People feel, “who are you to question my motives? You don’t know me.” They feel indicted and so they’re resentful. But I’d like to point out that who I’m indicting is myself first and foremost, as an American who is prone to the same self-justifying delusions as they are.
EG: You’ve said that you wrote THE UNMENTIONABLES in response to current political events. Can you elaborate?
BN: Well, look: what the play is really about are the discrepancies between what people claim to be the motives behind what they do, and what those motives actually are. Obviously, writing a play in a time that includes my fellow countrymen, using my tax dollars to pay for a war in which we claim the motivation to be… what? WMD’s? Liberation? The spread of “democracy?” A better life for the Iraqi people? And when, in pursuit of those nebulous “ideals,” what we actually do is threaten people with dogs and attach electrodes to their bodies… You’ll forgive me if I get a little skeptical about American idealism.
EG: Why did you decide to set the play in Africa?
BN: Did you see the cover of Vanity Fair last month? The “Africa Issue?” Guest edited by Bono, no less? What’s up with America’s need to fetishize Africa? Correction: African poverty. Do we sincerely think that buying that magazine, or for that matter a red shirt at the Gap, or some CD from Starbucks, is actually helping someone over in, say, Mali?
Some of us – such as the people in the play – actually go there, in the egotistical belief that we will make that crucial “difference,” trying desperately to relieve ourselves of the guilt of privilege obtained through violence. (And let’s face it, the fact that it’s a continent of black people – people who we dragged across the ocean to help ensure our privileged status – doesn’t hurt.) I honestly think that there’s not really a problem in impoverished Africa that can be solved by anyone other than the Africans themselves – and they are solving them. But we need to back off and stop providing economic support and investment in the corrupt regimes that continue to make some of their lives miserable. If you're looking for miserable people to help, there are plenty of them right here in this country.
EG: Tell me about your trip to Africa – it was a little over a year ago now, right?
BN: Yeah. It was very brief – two weeks. I went to urban parts of West Africa: Cotonou, in Benin; Lome, in Togo, and Accra in Ghana, and I basically went to cover my ass against the valid accusation that I’m speaking from practically no experience. The cities are, well, much as you’d expect – impoverished, dirty, lively, and totally unlike America. I’d never been anywhere in the world where the extremes between rich and poor are so brutally visible – people in a Mercedes being offered a freshly-killed giant rat for sale, as dinner. And sure, are there wonderful, beautiful things about that part of the world? Of course there are, plenty. But I wasn’t really writing about them. I’m no authority on Africa. I was writing about Americans.
EG: Did you spend much time with the Americans who live and work in the cities you were visiting?
BN: No. I know plenty of Americans already.
EG: You had already written a first draft before you went on your trip, correct? Did you go back and rework sections of the script when you returned to the states?
BN: I had written a third draft, if I'm not mistaken. I changed a few things here and there, but since the play centers on the Americans and the Africans who work directly with them, I found that, in terms of details, I had gotten a lot of things right.
EG: What’s next on your plate?
BN: I'm working, slowly, on two new plays. One is (sort of) about race, and the other is (sort of) about sex.
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