Review Fix chats with Susan Merson, playwright, actress and producing artistic director of the Thirteenth Street Repertory Theatre, who discusses her time with the Repertory, as well as her work with NY Theatre Intensives. Merson currently leads the programs of New York Theatre Intensives in association with the artists of Ensemble Studio Theatre, of which she is a member, League of Professional Theatre Women and is currently a Resident Playwright in the America -In -Play cohort. New fiction in progress: MURDER: A NOVEL has just been selected as a PITCH Week finalist at Words That Count Writers Retreat.
Review Fix: Why 13th Street Rep?
Susan Merson: This opportunity fell into my lap when my friend Jenny O’Hara approached me last year to help the REP reorganize and stabilize the programming and the physical plant. Jenny, the founder Edith O’Hara’s daughter, is someone for whom I would do anything. She has been more than a major touchstone in my life and when she called, I said yes.
Review Fix: What’s your creative process like as an author- as an artistic director?
Merson: At this point in my life as an artist, my process is pretty integrated with my way of life. I live as an artist, see the world as an artist and live like an artist that sees the world as clearly as possible, respond to it moment-to-moment and reflect the world as I see it when it asks me to note the moments through my filter.
Images usually emerge, and they ask me to follow them, and from those images come most of my writing.
As an actress, I have integrated many years of experience and training and so am able to assume the filters of the character, allow that truth to enter through my body, heart and energetics and welcome the character to be born in the world… and on the stage or screen.
Review Fix: What are your ultimate goals for the future?
Merson: I like to take one day at a time. Earning a living is good. Staying healthy. Continuing to expand as a person, though hopefully not around my belly. Seeing what happens with projects for NY Theatre Intensives, the program I created with Bob Jaffe and Rod Menzies, that started as a conservatory training program for new plays and now has morphed into a producing and theatre service organization as well.
It is an interesting time of life… I have no need to prove myself to anyone.
I, of course, am eager for my work to speak to a larger audience but I am not sure that I am in charge of that one. And I have started selling my crafts. SAS QUILTZ AND OTHER STUFF on Facebook.. so that is a satisfying new, and non-verbal way to reflect the world- inner and outer.
Review Fix: What do you think your audiences enjoy the most?
Merson: I have no idea but that is not my job, As an artist I do my work as I must. If it finds an audience, terrific. If not, the process of its making is as important as its ultimate journey in the world. Remember the REP is a curated rental house so my job is to allow the artists who come forward with the desire to show their work and make a financial commitment to do so, to do their work in dignity, with integrity, seriousness of purpose and hopefully with the lights functioning. In a house as old as ours, that light thing can be a real challenge.
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