How can you not love Henry... and monkeys?!

Dedicated, diligent, delectable readers — I hope you like hearing from playwrights.  We've enjoyed our conversations with 22 playwrights, whose work we chose to explore as part of the 2009 Inkubator Festival.  We knew they were imaginative... they've taken nearly every subject under the sun... global warming, fat, the meaning of time, conflict between ideals and politics, the reformation, The Odyssey, immaculate conception, tetherball... and monkeys... and woven rich, surprising, funny, frightening plays out of them.  In talking with them over the past several weeks, we've found them to funny, open, warm, thoughtful. (Wow... I'm all about the adjectives today).  Just awesome people all around.

Over the next few weeks, we'll be sharing with you insights from a number of our playwrights.  We're so glad to hear that they enjoyed their time working with us.

So here are some impressions from one of our wonderful playwrights: Henry Murray.  He has written a crazy great play called Monkey Adored that imagines a world of animals on the edge.  We presented a 20-minute excerpt of the play at The Kennedy Center. (You can learn a little more about it from a previous blog entry.)

Thanks, Henry, for your kind words.  And we can't wait to read the next draft of Monkey Adored.

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My name is Henry Murray and I was invited to DC over Labor Day Weekend for a reading of an excerpt from my play Monkey Adored.  I had never been to Washington (I grew up saying Warshington as a kid in Tennessee) so I flew from LA a day early to see the sights.  What a beautiful city!  

The Kennedy Center is amazing.  In LA we have have the Ahmanson, The Mark Taper Forum and The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion all on one downtown city block, but The Kennedy Center has all that in one building plus a few more performance spaces thrown in.  Impressive!

I had spoken to Anne McCaw by phone about what I wanted to work on with the play, and she encouraged me to change the 20-minute excerpt I had chosen to present.  I wasn't completely sure about the switch, but I decided trust her and the adventure and ultimately I was glad I did.  I had never worked with a dramaturge before, and I was intrigued and now believe it can be a powerful relationship.  I had additional excellent dramaturgical help from Meghan Long in rehearsal.

Speaking of rehearsal, my director Chris Niebling turned out to be an energetic and well-prepared dynamo of ideas and support.  The actors were talented and well cast, also well-prepared and energetic, and we had a great rehearsal.  Which, of course, led to a terrific reading.  The audience laughed way more than I expected and several people came up to me afterword and told me they were touched as well.  Gee, have I oversold this experience?  It was pretty ideal.  I was highly energized by the experience and now have a complete new draft of Monkey Adored. 

My only regret is that the Inkwell is a whole continent away from LA.