MALLERY AVIDON is a playwright interested in the intersection of fact and fiction. Her play O GURU GURU GURU, OR WHY I DON’T WANT TO GO TO YOGA CLASS WITH YOU had its world premiere at the Humana Festival in February of 2013 and will be produced by Carolina Actors Studio Theatre in November. Her plays include BREAKS & BIKES, MARY-KATE OLSEN IS IN LOVE & EVERYONE THEY KNEW WAS FAMOUS. Her work has been produced by Pavement Group, Target Margin Theater, On The Boards, angry BLVD & Williams College Summer Theater Lab and developed by Playwrights Horizons, BAPF, IRT, Seattle Repertory Theatre & New Century Theater Company. Ms. Avidon is an alum of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, an affiliated artist with New Georges, an artistic associate of Pavement Group & Target Margin Theater, co-curator of The Bushwick Starr’s monthly reading series & a dramaturg for Saint Genet. She has taught playwriting in prisons, high schools & universities. She is currently working on a commission from The Satori Group in Seattle and a series of plays based on a seven week road trip she took with DW Gibson & MJ Sieber in the summer of 2011 interviewing people across America who had been laid off because of the recession, NotWorkingProject.com. She holds a BFA in Theater from Cornish College of the Arts and an MFA in Playwriting from Brown University.
TMT: Mallery, you’re a TMT Associated Artist and like proud non-hetronormative parents we couldn’t be happier that your new play queerSpawn (produced by A Collection of Shiny Objects) runs at HERE May 10 – 19. In Yiddish we call you mishpokhe, which means family but for those out there who don’t know you as intimately, tell us something about yourself, something we couldn’t guess by seeing your work or even looking you right in the eyes.
MA: I make delicious latkes. The last time I made them was for a Last-Night-of-Chanukkah / Christmas-Tree-Trimming Party. We had Carnitas & Latkes. I grated all the potatoes and onions for the latkes by hand because the food processor was broken. When I was down in Louisville I had a seder for 15 people that I hosted with two of the awesome ATL interns who couldn’t go home for Passover. We used one Hippie-Haggadah from Vermont and one from Seattle. I made Matzoh Ball Soup, Potato Kugel & Noodle Kugel. The next weekend my friend Clare cooked a feast and we had Vegan Easter Dinner for 10. Which is all to say I think Theater and Dinner Parties are a lot alike. And I secretly love to cook, I just NEVER do it. Also as a totally non-religious person I still really like celebrating holidays! Also I make awesome friendship bracelets. The knotted embroidery thread kind. I spent way too much time in the 90’s making them, and now, along with the rest of that decade, they seem to be back in fashion.
TMT: Your new play queerSpawn centers around a fourteen year old boy with two moms and the power of imaginary friends. If you had to point to part of your body that the play came from where would you point? Why?
MA: Maybe to my ear but that’s an arbitrary answer. My solar plexus.
TMT: David Greenspan plays Dan Savage in queerSpawn. I remember the first time you and I met we connected over our awkward clumsy love for David and how we babble uncontrollably in his presence. What was the rehearsal like and were you able to get a out few clear syllables in his presence?
MA: It’s amazing! The whole cast is ridiculously amazing! And Jesse, the director (who was actually in Donya’s TMT Lab last fall) is so awesome! In addition to David Greenspan both Natalie Robin and Carolyn Mraz are working on the show. I take TMT with me everywhere I go!!!! We aren’t done yet! We have Tech tomorrow so lots of opportunities for me to say things like “you are theatrical crack” to Mr. Greenspan. (I really said that to him once. I was quoting another TMT artist.) At the beginning of the process DG asked me if he was saying things the way I heard them in my head. But I don’t really hear my plays in my head. But what he is doing is better than anything I could have ever imagined! I have managed to have a couple coherent conversations with him though. We talked about Fellini yesterday. I have to watch La Strada ASAP now.
TMT: In addition to queerSpawn, this year your play O Guru Guru Guru, or Why I Don’t Want to Go to Yoga Class With You preimered at the Humana Festival. It featured the indomnitale Rebecca Hart (Uncle Vanya), the unreal Daphne Gaines (Faust, The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc), costumes by Asta Bennie Hostetter (The (*) Inn) and was pretty much heralded by all as one powerful and personal lecture / mental inventory check-yourself-before-you-wreck-yourself immerseive audience experience of ashram life. Louisville treated you well… now how did you treat it?! What did you walk away with after the experience and can we expect to see O’ Guru… elsewhere soon?
MA: All of the hotel soap, a new Orange Portable Record Player and A LOT of records. Also more pieces of wisdom from amazing artists than I could have ever hoped for. O Guru has a production at Carolina Actors Studio Theatre in North Carolina in October. The Artistic director saw it at Humana and held off on announcing his season to add it. That felt cool. I hope maybe we’ll get to do it in New York. The whole creative team are rockstars and it would be amazing to work with all of them again. It all made me feel like the part of the book where she finds out she’s really a princess (or like Eloise. I was living in a hotel for seven weeks.) Also Les Waters is basically the coolest human ever (other than some people named David that we both know).
TMT: What’s next for you Mallery? It can’t be all a workin’ and a learn. What trash TV are you watching and when’s your next staycation? Cause you deserve it.
MA: I AM OBSESSED WITH THE VOICE! And Smash Obviously. I think they are cancelling Smash though and I’m kind of heartbroken. Hit List is my favorite fake musical EVER. Also Ready For Love which is like a combination of The Voice and The Bachelor and every other Reality Show ever. It was cancelled after like two episodes. I’m worried they won’t air the whole season and I’ll never know if the D-List Rockstar Found Love! And I’m going to Paris right after queerSpawn closes for my Mom’s Birthday! My mom and my uncle are taking me! I’ve never been! I see a lot of croissant and cafe au lait in my future! And poetry. And Gertrude Stein. I’m going to sit in front of 27 rue de Fleurus and read the same Rimbaud poem over and over.