Hometown:
KF: I’m from an itty bitty town in the south call Hope Mills, North Carolina.
CW: I'm from Kansas City, MO originally. I also lived in Grand Junction, CO when I was finishing high school.
Education:
KF: I went to UNC-Greensboro, where I majored in the blossoming and lucrative fields of English and Theatre.
CW: University of Central Florida majoring in English Literature, and my graduate work at NYU in Humanities and Social Thought.
Favorite Credits:
KF: Back in December we had a short piece in The Brick’s Tiny Theatre Festival called My Emotions Are Too Big For This Room. It’s the first play I ever wrote that got a New York review. Who the hell reviews ten minutes plays? It’s a very surreal thing.
CW: I loved My Emotions Are Too Big For This Room (eventually Kati and I will work on a play whose title will fit in a tweet easily). I also love working with Deb Margolin and with Untitled Theatre Company #61.
Why theater?:
CW: Guess I’m starting this? I grew up going to the theatre, mostly the big touring shows at the Kansas City Music Hall. I really got into it in middle and high school because I loved pretending to be someone else, and I liked having a goal and achieving it. Musicals were my jam; my friend Amanda and I would drive around our small Colorado town singing Avenue Q at the top of our lungs.
KF: It’s really the only thing I’ve ever been able to imagine myself doing for the rest of my life. I was writing plays when I was 3 and making my older brother act them out with me when he got home from school. It’s just always been there.
Tell us about a sex thing (or a bunch of liberals getting uptight about the sociopolitical implications of their desires):
KF: a sex thing is a play about the stuff it’s excessively long title suggests. Two couples are trying to make things work sexually, but their brains keep getting in the way.
CW: One of the most interesting thing we are exploring in a sex thing (at least in my opinion) is how reticent people are to talk about their needs and desires - and not just sexually. How do you ask for what you want? And what do you do if you don’t know what you want, or don’t want to want it?
KF: Also it has BDSM, hoopskirts, and wooden buttplugs.
What inspired you to write a sex thing?:
KF: Pretty much every time I saw kinks portrayed on stage, I didn’t like what I saw. Either it was all shock factor, or wildly inaccurate, or a bunch of walking talking stereotypes. I got fed up with it. What was it that Gandhi said? “Be the kinky sex-positive theatre you want to see in the world” Yes, that was definitely what he said.
CW: Yup.
What kind of theater speaks to you? What or who inspires you as an artist?:
KF: I love work that is intrinsically theatrical. I’m much less impressed by big budgets than I am by ingenuity. I’d rather Peter and the Starcatcher than more traditional high-tech broadway spectacle any day of the week. I love the theatre magic we make with our bodies and the simplest of tools.
If you could work with anyone you’ve yet to work with, who would it be?:
KF: I want to write a musical with Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori. I want it to somehow be gayer than Fun Home, and then I want us to win a Tony for the first 3-person all female writing team.
CW: Deborah Warner and Fiona Shaw. Sarah Ruhl. Janelle Monae and Esperanza Spalding (a sci-fi musical perhaps?).
What show have you recommended to your friends?:
KF: When I saw An Octoroon it was all I could talk to anyone about for like a week.
CW: Besides Fun Home? The TEAM’s Roosevelvis has been closed for a while in NYC, but I’ve been recommending it to all of my Boston friends for when it goes to A.R.T. next spring.
Who would play you in a movie about yourself and what would it be called?:
KF: I would probably be played by Melissa McCarthy, less because we look a like, and more because there aren’t too many fat funny ladies who get to star in movies.
CW: In a perfect world, Ellen Page.
KF: I think the title would be something something cool and mysterious but about whiskey, and queers. A Queer Whiskey Cocktail? Old Fashioned Queers Drinking Old Fashioneds?
CW: Yeah, definitely on the queer whiskey title train.
If you could go back in time and see any play or musical you missed, what would it be?:
KF: I would travel back in time to earlier this year and watch The Team’s Roosevelvis at least 7 more times.
CW: I agree. I also very recently missed Airline Highway, which I am kicking myself over.
What’s your biggest guilty pleasure?:
KF: While working on this project, it’s turning out to be getting actors to do silly things while simulating sex on stage. It’s the best.
CW: I don’t know if I have a lot of guilty pleasures, I tend to embrace my overly enthusiastic responses to life and media. My fascination with competitive cooking shows featuring Gordon Ramsey perhaps?
If you weren’t working in theater, you would be _____?:
KF: Traveling circus. Bearded lady. No doubt about it.
CW: If I stopped working in theatre now, I would want to be a comic book editor. But if I had never been a theatre person? Probably teaching high school English.
What’s up next?:
a sex thing is in f*ckfest at The Brick for 4 performances in June. Our next project together is a full production of Patronage: a new fairy tale with Random Access Theatre Company this winter.
For more on Not Without Rage, visit http://www.facebook.com/notwithoutrage and www.bricktheater.com/f*ckfest
