STEVEN DRUKMAN: Any play that catalogs injuries as a structuring device is more than okay by me; I find scars sexy. A friend once said to me, “Of course you like scars—you’re a writer!” Insightful, since there’s a narrative behind every scar.
RAJIV JOSEPH: When we see a scar we think, “Something’s not quite right, there was some damage done to that person”—and therein lies a story. Wounds and scars are like the marks of time on your body. Those marks of time make up who we are.
The initial impulse for constructing a play around those scars, though, came from hearing about a friend’s injuries. He had had so many bizarre wounds that it occurred to me that you could chart a life that way, where the mile markers of a life were actual injuries. And so I started writing some scenes between two very specific kids, and wondered, “Why am I making the decision to enter a scene, to open up the curtain between Doug and Kayleen, through an injury?” And I discovered early on that because of these characters’ particular personalities, the strategy made sense.
Besides, isn’t any love story that spans decades—which is what you’ve written—ultimately a tale of scars, even if in most love affairs (and plays) those scars are internal?
Exactly. And what “marks” these people as odd is how they deal with physical injury, so it made sense that every scene should revolve around these wounds, these gashes. It started with more basic scrapes and bruises—kids on the playground—and then developed into some more serious maladies as I kept writing.
That move you make—of literalizing and externalizing a relationship’s wounds—also provides something superpoignant: It points out that the things that scrape us and collide with us only hurt in the short term. We cut, we bleed, we may have a scar—but we go on. The sadness for this couple is when they don’t cut and bleed—that they come so close to crashing into each other and loving, but they never do collide.
Right. Doug’s timing is really off. Well, that’s true for both of them. So the connections they can make revolve around the collisions, the wounds—which sets them apart and identifies them as outsiders. At age 8, Kayleen’s not squeamish about Doug’s gashed-up face. At 13, what starts out as the most humiliating event of her adolescence turns into a sweet gesture on Doug’s part, and they’re able to share…vomit. (Laughs.)
And it gives the lie to the fact that males have more stomach for blood and puke and gross-out than females.
Exactly! They’re both just kids who enjoy that stuff—which goes beyond being a boy or girl—and the other kids probably didn’t hang out with them much in high school.
There’s a refrain in your play: “Does it hurt?” “A little.” He keeps answering that way—until the end.…
Yes, when Doug replies about the broken tooth, in the second-to-last scene, he says, finally, “It hurts like crazy.” And I’m glad you see the sadness, but I also find it amusing. That’s the least gruesome injury—compared to Head Split Open, or Eye Blown Out, or Nail through the Foot, etc. So what’s that about? He must be hurting in some other way. By the way, another way to say, “Does it hurt?” is “Are you experiencing deep feeling right now?” (Laughs.) And when Doug changes his reply, finally acknowledging great pain, we’re deep into the play. He’s come into that scene—fool that he is—and he’s ready to commit. At her father’s wake! That he shows up late for! Noble intentions, sure—but he’s tone-deaf about what Kayleen needs. If he had acted like a normal fuckin’ person and been there for her, and then over coffee a week later had asked her to be with him, maybe their lives would have turned out differently. But he just bursts in and expects her to accept his sudden commitment and affection. And she’s got her own problems. People misread this play as Doug being okay throughout and Kayleen being fucked up, and I think they’re both totally fucked up. (Laughs.)
I enjoyed Scott Ellis’s production at Second Stage, where the injuries are applied on stage, wiped away in caresses between scenes, reapplied. Was that true at the Alley and at Woolly Mammoth?
Each production attempted to ritualize those transitions. I don’t spell out in the script how it’s done—I am really reticent about that. I just note that the transitions should be leisurely, and ask that the director doesn’t hide that Doug and Kayleen are changing the set, costumes, etc. The characters are living their unconscious relationship in those moments and I think they should be more intimate than what plays out in the spoken scenes. When they’re apart it’s their dreams that connect them; that’s the idea. And every production solves that differently.
Talk about the mathematical formula: 15 years forward, 10 years back.
When I started, I wrote only the 8-, 13- and 18-year-old scenes. Once I burrowed into the characters I knew there was a longer story to tell. I looked at that random five-year gap between those first scenes and decided I liked it, so I would order the play by going 15 years ahead and 10 years back, which meant five-year “advances.” If I got them to 38, then it works out that the second scene in the play and the second-to-last scene in the play would both be when they were 23. So I decided that that must be a big scene where important stuff happens.
People ask me what happens to them after 38, whether I am optimistic or pessimistic. Sometimes I feel one way, sometimes I feel another. I don’t know what happens to them.
This play is so different from Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. Is there a “signature” or recurring thematic concern that identifies a Rajiv Joseph play?
I would like to fool myself and say no. But there are friends and observers who insist there are strong resemblances in all of my plays. But I have to say: I don’t want to think about my works in a meta-sense. I don’t think it will help me as a writer.
Well, there are scars, for one thing—which is how we began this conversation. A character in your early play Animals Out of Paper says about origami: “Folds leave scars.” It seems that the whips and scorns of time are quite present in many of your plays.
Right—and being haunted, which comes up literally in Bengal Tiger. And it has been suggested that it comes up figuratively in all my plays, including Gruesome Playground Injuries.
What about the play you’re about to do next at the Alley? That sounds haunting.
It’s called The Monster at the Door. I’ve been working on some version of this play for a couple of years. I have never worked on anything that has fluctuated in shape, tone, character, setting, as this play has. It was a hyperreal romantic drama and now it’s a magical realist crazy play! (Laughs.) The only thing that has remained the same is that there’s a character named Jesse! And it’s not even the same person. Why call it the same play, then? All I can say is that there is some spirit that has passed through it from that opening draft.
Often the gateway drugs into playwriting are acting and/or journalism. But that wasn’t your path.
I wanted to be a fiction writer, but I didn’t have discipline. I was just taken with the idea of being a writer. Then I applied to NYU as a screenwriter. By the end of the year I switched my concentration to playwriting. For a while I taught expository writing at NYU and I learned a lot about wrestling with texts, and not putting in anything extra that shouldn’t be there.
And you served in the Peace Corps?
Yes, which also served my writing, because I did a lot of journaling. When I look at the journals I see that I was trying out styles and tones—imitating (poorly) other writers—and then I finally found my own voice. I have a hard time writing prose. If a theatre asks me for a statement on my play—argh!—writing that will take me longer than it takes me to write half a play. Partly it’s that all the focus is on my voice. In playwriting, I can put those words into other people’s voices, and hide.
Which prose writers do you admire?
One of my early heroes was Salman Rushdie. As a part-Indian kid, I felt vaguely proud of his notoriety. I also love Kundera, and I worship Salinger. I know I love them because they’re the writers I reread and reread again.
This month, Steven Drukman’s play The Innocents will premiere at Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota, Fla., and his play The Prince of Atlantis is featured in South Coast Repertory Theatre’s Pacific Playwrights Festival in Costa Mesa, Calif.
