Review Fix Exclusive: Barbara Blatner Talks ‘You/Me’

Review Fix chats with playwright Barbara Blatner about her newest production “You/Me,” a collection of three short plays currently running at this year’s Midtown International Theatre Festival in New York City. Blatner also discusses her creative process for all three pieces and what she hopes people get out of the production.

Review Fix: What was the inspiration for this production?

Barbara Blatner: DATA, or WHAT IS GIVEN, I wrote in Jack Hofsiss’ Directing/Playwriting workshop at HB Studio in summer, 2013. He asked us to write a ten-minute play based on a current event; or subject; I chose government surveillance and data collection and the implicit subject of “enemies.”

ADVANCES IN COMMUNICATION is loosely based on my relationship with my older sister, also a writer.

My brief musical, BETTY and MORTIE, tells the story of my late mother’s romance with her boyfriend Mortie when she was 73 and he was 90. The story is of course greatly condensed but pretty much follows what happened in their lives together.

Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?

Blatner: Very slow, very deep. I am willing to work as long as I need to make a play work, so I do a great deal of revision. A player can take me years and years to finish. I demand a lot of myself and love that I demand so much. My process is also allowing myself to be transformed by the writing, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually, to discover and excavate parts of myself that would otherwise remain concealed. You sometimes have to feel a great deal to “find” the truth of a character or action, and I’m all for feeling in a world where feeling is often blunted. My process is a life path, a very deep furrow for me.

Review Fix: What makes you different from other playwrights?

Blatner: Probably what makes me different is that I come to playwriting as a poet and composer/musician, and in my work I go for musical and poetic dialogue, metaphor, symbol. My challenge is always to make the work and the metaphors and poetry accessible and active onstage and not get enamored with my own language. My gifted director Christen Callahan tells me, and I so appreciate this, that my work is layered and has various levels, and at least part of her work is to simplify the plays onstage and at the same time keep the layers vibrating. I have no doubt that she will do that.

Review Fix: Is this what you always wanted to do?

Blatner: Absolutely. I love that in theater live human beings play out the human story in front of our eyes. I find it to be a holy experience, a sacrament, at best. I want to create this kind of experience for my audiences, something that moves them deeply, causes them to think, brings them into contact with the mystery of being.

Review Fix: What makes this production special?

Blatner: My director, Christen, had the theatrical intuition, intense perceptiveness and passion for theatre work to see that these three short pieces of mine could be staged together as an evening entertainment. I would never have thought of that! But she did, and her ingenuity is carrying us through. The combination of these three short plays, each of which dissect a relationship and plumb the intensity of relationship itself, make the production special and rather unique.

Review Fix: How is your cast unique?

Blatner: First of all, we have a very winsome 80-year-old actor/singer performing my little musical, BETTY AND MORTIE, about elderly lovers. That is a very unique situation and a delight, and the woman playing opposite him has great instinct, savvy timing and a lovely voice. Also, interestingly, the two pairs of actors in the other short plays look like each other, could be related. And this works out so well because in one play features two sisters while the other features an aunt and her niece. I sense the open heartedness of these six actors and their willingness to be vulnerable on stage. They cried during the read-through and apparently cry at every rehearsal! They are genuinely in the plays, really involved. I do not see this degree of openness and humanity in actors all that often and it moves me a great deal.

Review Fix: What did you learn about yourself through this process?

Blatner: I learned that I have a lot to learn about coproducing an evening of theater. I have produced in the past but not for a long time. I tend to be good at writing but not at administration, prop-hunting, program making, etc. We are very lucky to have three talented assistants who are mostly making these things happen. I have learned that I need to keep going out into the theater community, making connections beyond the quiet, invisible, interior work I do in my quiet apartment as a writer. Also, I have learned more about what it is to be working with a deeply committed and artistically ambitious director and her team, how to communicate clearly, work out the knots between us, bring compassion and appreciation to each task, support and back each other fully.

Review Fix: How does it feel to be a part of this festival?

Blatner: It feels exciting, challenging, fun, difficult, basically exhilarating. It’s always a juggling act to put up a show, and this one, because there are three very different short plays being performed and one of them is a musical, there are many moving parts that have to be coordinated. It’s a pretty fancy clock, but will be a fine one, I suspect. Also, as music director for the project, I’ve been having great fun playing and rehearsing the music with the stars of BETTY AND MORTIE.

Review Fix: What are your goals for the production?

Blatner: I would like to reach as many people as possible. I know that my director is doing a beautiful job of making my stories alive, clear, animated, spare. I would like this production to show my work in a great light and keep my theatre career moving forward.

Review Fix: Who do you think will enjoy it the most?

Blatner: I know that the musical will be enjoyed by all, because it is moving and emotional. I think DATA, or WHAT IS GIVEN, about a brainwashed Supervisor and her naïve new hire, a Data Collector, is the most intellectual of the three pieces and will appeal to political-geared members of the audience. ADVANCES IN COMMUNICATION, which tells the story of two sisters arguing about a family memoir, I hope will evoke a taste of sibling interaction that many audience members will enjoy and relate to.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Blatner: My full-length play, YEARS OF SKY, produced at 59E59 Theaters in 2013 by Scripts Up!, directed by Christopher Scott, is in circulation in Los Angeles with director Stewart Zully who will direct a reading of the play there and a possible production next year. I continue to work on two other plays, MARILYN MONROE IN THE DESERT, a surreal fantasy in which Marilyn meets Death (a handsome Miner) in the desert and must accept her aging self, and CLEARING, which recently had a local reading, about a and Afghanistan veteran undergoing In his mother’s backyard a full-blown hallucinated flashback to a traumatic combat experience. Also I am also co-writing at this time a children’s musical called heart song HEART song, musical instrument characters who make music by listening to each other’s hearts. My co-writer and I are crossing fingers that the show will be produced in the Fall of this year.