Review Fix chats with Karl Hinze, who discusses his production at this year’s Fresh Fruit Festival in New York City, detailing the creative process and letting us know what to expect.
About the Production:
 7/13  6:30 pm, 7/15 7 pm   World Premiere
Mark, Finn, and Joe are juniors at Holy Apostle High, where religion class is not quite as interesting as their various crushes on teachers and each other. But there are deeper secrets bubbling under the surface, and when the boys learn about Catholic Mystics, Mark wonders if that might explain the strange things he’s been seeing and hearing… A show for anyone who has had a crush on a teacher, questioned the existence of God, or survived high school (preferably with soul intact).Â
Review Fix: What was the inspiration for this project?
Karl Hinze: A few months after graduating college, I started grad school and was suddenly teaching college students as a TA. Transitioning so quickly from “student” to “teacher” showed me what a strange and—in some ways—artificial boundary that was. That (along with the fact that yes, I had been that student who had a crush on every teacher) inspired me to write this story about a student-teacher relationship, set against the backdrop of these almost-supernatural religious experiences.
Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?
Hinze: Typically, I’m an obsessive planner, organizer, and outline-writer. Especially coming from the world of musical theatre, I generally try to have a pretty good sense of a character and their journey before putting pencil to paper.

Review Fix: What makes this different or special?
Hinze: For this play, I challenged myself to just sit down and write—no outline!—and see what comes out.
Review Fix: What did you learn about yourself through this process?
Hinze: Like many writers, I have a sense of the kinds of stories I like to tell: for me, that’s stories about relationships and fidelity, public-vs-private personas, class and privilege… working on this play I was surprised to find new, fertile territories, topics like religion and adolescence— things I hadn’t explored before in my writing.
Review Fix: What are your ultimate goals for this production and for the future?
Hinze: Ultimately my goal for this (and any) production is to get to continue telling interesting stories with great collaborators. I’m thrilled for the chance to do that here at the Fresh Fruit Festival, and hope it leads to more opportunities to do so, with this play and others.
Review Fix: What’s next?
Hinze: I’m working on an original play-with-music about three church choirs who are forced to merge for one Christmas service, as well as continuing development on an original musical called Big Picture with lyricist Patrick Spencer and bookwriter Susan Murray.
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