Award-winning playwright gets to the Punchline, discusses career and offers advice to actors, writers
By Chad Fasca
Several weeks ago, David Ives, the award-winning playwright most widely known for his collection of one-act plays, "All in the Timing," agreed to take time out of his busy schedule to respond to several questions from ActorsUpdate about his work and his early years (K-12?).
We communicated in Unamunda, the universal language created by Ives. The interview, translated into English, appears below.
ActorsUpdate (AU): You are often described as "clever," "linguistic" or "a lively wit." While these are apt descriptors, I've often felt that the cadence you imbue within the text of your plays goes unnoticed. How do you feel about these descriptions?
David Ives (DI): Yes indeed I have been called clever and witty, and with so many people saying that, I guess I must be clever and witty though I'd rather not be, if I had a choice. Clever and witty people, frankly, give me the hoo-ha's and make me want to leave the room. In fact, I often find myself trying to leave the room I'm in. Which would seem to be proof positive that I'm somehow "clever" and "witty." Still, I find that description strange because what I don't do well is write jokes. I doubt if you put my plays through a humor sieve you'd find more than half a dozen actual jokes left in the mesh. I certainly envy people like Paul Rudnick or Chris Durang or Simon Gray who can toss off jokes at the drop of a set-up. Oh, well. (Sigh.) As for my cadences, they've been ignored along with just about everything else except my cleverness and wittitude. You have to remember that all these plays I've written have succeeded in catapulting me into an obscurity I never dreamed of. The main thing people seem to notice about my work is the tropical thickness of my eyebrows. Maybe someday the Obies will create a category for that.
AU: How much does music influence your work?
DI: I seem to remember that somebody once asked Beckett what he would have done with his life if he hadn't become a writer, and his answer was: "Listen to music." I'm sorry old Sam got to that line before I did, because it'd be my answer too. I certainly spend a hell of a lot more time with music than with theatre in any form. I listen to music every day—I mean, REALLY listen—but I go to the theatre only every few weeks these days, if that. I feel as if I've learned more about dialogue from listening to Richard Goode's recent recording of Bach's Partitas number 2, 4 and 5 than I have from any play I've seen in the same time period. I'd certainly miss music more than theatre, if an alien invasion happened to wipe one or the other of them off the face of the earth.
I played the piano as a kid—very, very badly—and played the organ in church—even worse, I'd say—but recently I took the piano up again. I found a wonderful teacher with an equally wonderful name: Dr. Hugo Goldenzweig. I practice two or three hours a day, see Dr. Goldenzweig for an hour every Wednesday afternoon, and this is the best thing I've done for myself in centuries. If I had forgotten how to relax, I've learned it again. If I had forgotten how to concentrate, I'm learning it again: All through the piano.
But then, what is music but invisible theatre?
AU: How did you maintain and nurture your creative writing career during the time between joining "Foreign Affairs" and your enrollment in Yale Drama School? Where did you find validation or support?
DI: I'd be lying if I said I had a creative writing career at that point. "Career" to me implies somebody taking cabs everywhere, scurrying around town to take meetings and making a living off of his or her work. David Rabe had a "career" at that time—more or less the end of the 70's, when I was in my twenties. What I had at the time was a morbid compulsion to write at every available moment of the day or night.
Over the years I had seen productions of some of my plays, had been playwright in residence at possibly the worst theatre in Los Angeles (it's hard to determine the absolute worst in that category), had had a play of mine published, had written a couple of radio plays, and some of my short stories had appeared in literary magazines. In other words, I was "starting out as a writer."
This usually means the main validation or support you get is from a wildly inflated ego, the blindness of youth, the hollow cheering-on of friends who fear for your sanity, and the inspiration provided by the great Masters. I have to admit that having had my first two plays in New York at the Circle Rep didn't hurt. In a funny way, though, I'm not sure validation or support is ever as important as the self-esteem gurus would have us believe, since every day when you sit down you're facing a blank piece of paper and have to accomplish the same task: write something interesting/entertaining/thoughtful/beautiful/moving on it. Fat lot of good validation or support does you at that point.
Maybe more valuable than validation or support is money: making just enough money that you don't have to worry all the time about how you can afford more blank pieces of paper. It sounds crass and materialistic, but I started doing my best writing when luck got me a job writing a script for Hollywood and for several months I could, at last, say 'Fuck it,' and sit back and just write without money worries.
AU: During those lean years was there any one particular food that you survived on?
DI: There was a time when I was living on a diet of gin-and-tonics and popcorn. If anyone else ever decides to take up that regimen, be sure you toss a slice of lime into the gin-and-tonic. It prevents scurvy. I also recommend pemmican, beef jerky, and peanut butter. Not taken together all at once, of course.
AU: In the preface to "All in the Timing" you mention the Manhattan Punch Line Theatre and it's Festival of One-Act Comedies as "much reviled then, much missed now." Can you elaborate? Can you put this Theatre's influence into context for your own career?
DI: I believe I've said all this before in various places, but at the risk of being dull, repetitious and cloying, I'll happily say it again. The Punchline was mostly reviled by the people who lovingly worked there: by playwrights, because the Xerox machine seldom worked and you weren't supposed to use it anyway; by actors, because checks were not always quite on time; and by designers, because they had a set and costume budget just under two figures. But Steve Kaplan's Manhattan Punch Line was a paradise because it annually gave you the chance to shine in one-act form and the Times regularly came with a light meter to report on your brilliance.
Also, production values were minimal, so you were forced to write well. You couldn't hide behind the furniture because there wasn't any. The Festival was also a great way to accrete work. "All in the Timing" only came about because I'd had a play or two every year in the Punch Line Festival and could gather them into an evening. An evening, by the way, which was turned down by every producer in town except Casey Childs at Primary Stages, who reluctantly accepted the idea of an evening of one-acts only under the stipulation that I write a new play for the evening, which turned out to be "The Universal Language." So you see, all the "validation" I'd gotten year after year from good reviews in the Times counted for almost nothing when it came to attracting producers. If only there were five Manhattan Punch Lines around today, with five Steve Kaplans to run them and five Xerox machines that worked.
AU: In "Speed-the-Play" you took four Mamet works and condensed them into seven minutes on stage. Can you perform a similar act of condensation on all the advice and instruction you gave to writers during your teaching engagements at Columbia University and NYU? You've got seven words.
DI: Samuel Beckett did it in less than seven with his famous advice: "Fail. Fail again. Fail better." I could say, "Don't (1) let (2) the (3) bastards (4) get (5) you (6) down (7.)" I'd rather just say: "Write write write write write write write."
Read the (a)(u) article on David, click here.
Read about what David Ives is up to, click here.
Read David Ives' recent article in Zoetrope All-Story Magazine, click here.
