Review Fix chats with playwright Lauren Ferebee about her upcoming production, “The Reckless Season.” Chatting about the creation of the production and her creative process, gives us an inside look at what is poised to be an incredibly emotional adventure on stage.
For more information about The Reckless Season click Here.
Review Fix: What was the inspiration behind The Reckless Season?
Lauren Ferebee: When I was writing my first full-length play Somewhere Safer, two of the characters in the play were combat journalists, and as I researched those characters, I had the opportunity to do a Skype interview with Stacy Pearsall, who was both a photographer and an Air Force veteran. Talking with her about what it was like to be in combat and looking at her images really planted the early seeds for wanting to write about soldiers coming home from the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That experience percolated when I wrote the first draft of The Reckless Season, which I did in about two weeks. When I left New York to do a six month residency at HUB-BUB and the Spartanburg Little Theatre in South Carolina, I submitted the play as my main project, and became inspired to shape the play in its current form from what I discovered through extensive research – watching documentaries and movies, reading blogs, books, poetry, and talking with recent veterans in that area.
Review Fix: What are your creative goals here?
Ferebee: I don’t really have goals in mind when I write a play. People have had all kinds of reactions and takeaways from the script over the time I’ve developed it, and I like leaving it open for that.
Review Fix: Who do you think will be affected by seeing The Reckless Season the most?
Ferebee: I think there’s something in the play that speaks to a lot of people about loneliness and pain. I know one of the main reactions the play elicits is that people tell me their weird stories about the ashes of dead bodies that they have had to deal with in the past. People that have family members who served in heavy combat sometimes come up to me after readings and tell me they recognized their family member in the experience of the characters onstage, which is a very visceral and personal reaction that I always have great respect for.
Review Fix: How do you want it to be remembered?
Ferebee: A guy last year told me in a talkback that he felt like it was a play he had to experience from his guts. I think that sounds like a good takeaway.
Review Fix: What’s next for you?
Ferebee: Goat Song Theatre Collective in Dallas, TX is in the midst of producing an amazing season of events called Talking Too Much: A Year of Conversation that is based around themes in my play Sexual Geography, which they are producing in the fall. They just did this incredible event called Anonymous Monologues, which featured work from about fifteen women working in the DFW theatre community who had the opportunity to write anonymously about their experiences as women in theatre, and it was a totally beautiful, packed event. I have been so excited to see how my work has been a generative force to talk about gender issues. I’m also working on an interesting project for a small company in Nashville that I have high hopes for, and I have some development opportunities in the works for my new play Every Waiting Heart, which is a play about charismatic Christianity, domestic violence, and birds. And we’re about to kick off programming for the second full year of The Aviary, the new play incubator that I co-direct in Dallas. I’m also mentoring a high school student in Frisco that is doing a reading of her first full-length play in May, which I think is the greatest thing ever.
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