Award-winning playwright gets to the Punchline, discusses career and offers advice to actors, writers
By Chad Fasca
In a perfect world, David Mamet would be writing this article. Then one Chicago native would be writing about another Chicago native: both named David. Perhaps, they would chitchat about the south side of Chicago neighborhood they shared as youths. Or maybe they would discuss the paths they took to achieve success and secure solid reputations as playwrights. Who better to understand where Ives comes from and what influences shaped him than a neighbor.
But my true motivation for this pairing would be to cause trouble. After all, Ives managed to condense four works of Mamet into a seven-minute, one-act theatre satire. Would the author of "State and Main," "Glengarry Glen Ross," "Speed the Plow," "Oleanna," and "House of Games" among others have something to say about that? I admit harboring a morbid fascination with transcribing this hypothetical interview. I can see myself typing furiously to capture a string of expletives from Mamet as the microphone picks up him diving at Ives from across the interview table. I can even see myself writing the headline:
Let's call it: "Mamet/Ives" or "The Persecution of David Mamet as Reconstructed by The Editor of ActorsUpdate Under the Writing Direction of David Ives."
To make a long story short, Mr. Mamet will not be writing this article. Despite my efforts to extract so much as a comment from the playwright, Mr. Mamet is not even quoted in this article. So, you are stuck with me. Perhaps it is for the best that someone who admires Ives interviews him.
Ives has a gift for finding what we gloss over in everyday life or theatre and shining a light on it. With a simple twist, he turns a concept, like having states of mind, on its head by addressing the concept from a more literal perspective ("The Philadelphia"). These states become cities of mind. He transforms the debate about establishing a universal language into a linguistic shell game ("The Universal Language"). He turns the romantic first night of two, young mayflies into a midlife crisis as the two mayflies discover they have one day to live and it's half over ("Time Flies").
Over the years his originality and skill with language have won the raves of critics Richard Corliss in Time Magazine, John Simon in New York Magazine, and Ben Brantley and the late Vincent Canby in The New York Times among others. His own life defies convention. He attended an all-boys seminary high school, but wandered off the path to the priesthood to pursue his penchant for playwriting. Though his writing is intensely funny, Ives says that he does not write many jokes. His tall, lanky frame, gray hair and glasses suggest a bookish type, but Ives completed our interview after rafting/camping along the Colorado River.
Ives began writing plays in earnest while attending Northwestern University. He moved to New York in 1973, when the Circle Repertory Company produced one of his earlier works, "Canvas." He has remained in the Big Apple (off and on) ever since. In his early years, Ives held a day job as an editor at Foreign Affairs magazine. In the meantime he continued to write plays and short stories and eventually enrolled in Yale Drama School in 1981, where he received an M.F.A. three years later.
The now defunct Manhattan Punch Line Theatre's Festival of One-Act Comedies provided Ives with a toehold in the New York theatre scene as many of his short, one-act plays debuted there throughout the 1980s. "Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread"; "Words, Words, Words"; "Variations on the Death of Trotsky" and "Sure Thing" were produced at Manhattan Punch Line's Festival of One-Act Comedies. His reputation grew steadily leading to productions of his work at Primary Stages and Ensemble Studio Theatre.
Ives cemented his reputation and achieved widespread interest with the off-Broadway production of an evening of one-act comedies, "All in the Timing." The collection of one-acts ran for more than 600 performances off-Broadway and won the Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Playwriting Award for Ives. He also received a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship in playwriting. In 1998, Ives was chosen as the Inge Festival's New Voice in American Theatre for 1998. Since 1996, Ives has taught courses intermittently at New York University and Columbia University.
Read the (a)(u) interview of David Ives, click here.
Read about what David Ives is up to, click here.
Read David Ives' recent article in Zoetrope All-Story Magazine, click here.
