Review Fix chats with playwright Review Fix Exclusive: Daphne Silbiger who discusses their new production, Very Blue Light.
About the Playwright:
Daphne Silbiger (Playwright) is a playwright and musician. Her work has been seen at The Brick, Life World, Rivendell Theatre Ensemble (Chicago), Crashbox (Austin), Pete’s Candy Store, The Paradise Factory, Dixon Place and JACK, among others. She is a Macdowell fellow, was a travel fellow with the Center for International Theatre Development (Cluj-Napoca, RO), and was in residency at the Sitka Fellows Program (Sitka, AK). Her play Six Years Old is published through Dramatists Play Service and has been performed in schools and theaters across the country, and her play Pound was a Relentless Award semi-finalist. She plays in the band Go Home, has contributed music to work by Trisha Brown Dance Company (BAM), and zavé martohardjono (Lincoln Center), and performs electronic music as sa_phne. She earned her MFA in playwriting at UT Austin, and has taught with the School of Making Thinking. She also makes collages.
About the Production:
The Tank NYC (Meghan Finn, Artistic Director; Johnny G. Lloyd, Artistic Director; Molly FitzMaurice, Managing Producer) and producer Isabelle Chirls have announced the full cast and design team for their New York Premiere of Very Blue Light by Daphne Silbiger (Six Years Old at Paradise Factory; semifinalist for the 2019 Relentless Award with Pound), directed by Emily Moler (Bitch Boxer with Krank Brooklyn) at The Tank (312 W 36th St., New York, NY 10018), September 10-October 4.
Two women reunite with their childhood best friend in Marfa, TX, only to find that he aligns politically with his bosses in big tech. With uncertainty defining both the present and future, Angela faces the temptation of adopting her old friend’s conservative lifestyle, while Magna seeks (and finds) some certainty about a progressive way forward when she and a lifelong Marfan encounter the mysterious Marfa Lights. Very Blue Light is about people caught in a conflict between their social network, emergent technology, and the natural world, and asks: how can we collectively imagine a new model for the uncertain future?
Review Fix: How was this production born?
Daphne Silbiger: I was in my last year at UT Austin doing their MFA playwriting program, and the staff and I were discussing a “thesis show.” The department wanted me to do this really ridiculous play I have focused on a time-travelling Joanna Newsom, but I was more interested in working on something more text-focused. I had just been on a trip to Big Bend/Marfa with my partner at the time, and had come across a bizarre chapbook about conspiracies around the Marfa Lights–became obsessed. So, I got a draft of a new play about trans people living in Marfa/interacting with the mysterious alien lights, sent it to my director (who very graciously was like “yes let’s do this one”), and petitioned the department to do Very Blue Lights. They agreed! That was 2022.
Review Fix: This topic is so on-point with today’s society. Any thoughts of turning into a series as well? There’s so much meat on the bone!
Silbiger: Would I know how?? Hah. Maybe. I would need a very smart dramaturg to help me build out the story and characters, and I would need to go spend a month or two hanging out with people in Marfa to actually know what I’m doing. My TV consumption is primarily/entirely European detective dramas, so I would maybe need to also inject an element of government conspiracy… which might be easier than I think re: aliens… so who knows. I’ll watch more Tatort: Lindholm and think upon it.
Review Fix: What was development like? How did the production change?
Silbiger: Development was long, and has really only just wrapped. I worked a first draft at UT with the brilliant students and team, led by director Kristen Osborn. Then, Kristen and I spent a weekend with Jonathan L. Green at Rivendell in Chicago getting a draft two, and did a reading there that was really informative. Then I poked on it for a couple of years, and talked to The Tank about what I’ll call draft 2.5. Over the course of this production, the script has changed radically and has landed at what I’ll call performance draft one. If we can have the script published, there might then be another pass.
A lot of talk for the Tank run was how to make a 2022 play into a 2026 play—two very different things. The answer was to think deeper about the political/technological climate in Texas and the US, think about the state as a microcosm of the wider world under late state capitalism, and to write from that perspective. I also have been reading economics and political manifestos from the aughts, detective novels, Wild Duck, Vanya, Kroetz, listening to New Models, and all that has helped evolve the play’s DNA from “wow, identity is complicated” to “in what ways is my identity a product of my environment, who does that benefit, and what am I going to do about it.”
Review Fix: Any fun stories from on-set?
Silbiger: We have a good time. Everyone is super busy so it feels like rehearsals always include a little bit of venting from a variety of days, which yields interesting anecdotes. We rehearse on the 6th floor of a building that has 8 flights of stairs and (typically) no elevator, so we get cardio. I eat a lot of Ricola when we rehearse. Our director Emily Moler pulls a tarot card every day and keeps it in her script. We get along, thank goodness.
Review Fix: What do you want people to take with them after this production?
Silbiger: I think of something director Emily Moler said after our first rehearsal, which was that she hopes everyone who sees the play leaves thinking of a specific person and saying “I have to call them right now” or “I might never call them again.” I like that. I’d like for you to leave a little more wary of social media. I hope a few ghosts from the past appear and come to the forefront of your imagination. I hope you find compassion for your younger self that made mistakes in their teens and twenties, or before they came out. I hope people walk out and can name that the world feels weird and unfamiliar, and that we can carry on even though the center has not held.
Review Fix: What else would you like to add?
Silbiger: I say this with some frequency, but I hear a play before I see a play. I hope this is a nice play to listen to.
Review Fix: Where can people find out more?
Silbiger: https://thetanknyc.org/calendar-1/verybluelight
And @ verybluelight on Instagram if that’s your thing!
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