Each month on The Subtext Brian speaks with a playwright about life, writing, and whatever itches we are scratching.

This month Brian talks to Spenser Davis, is a writer and a director born and raised in Arkansas who’s currently based in Chicago. He was the 2020-21 Michael Maggio Directing Fellow at the Goodman Theatre, where he served as associate director to artistic director Bob Falls on his live-streamed production of The Sound Inside. Davis is currently assistant-directing on Falls’s production of Swing State at the Goodman (a new play by Rebecca Gilman, who appeared on The Subtext in the winter of 2019). Spenser’s most recent play is A Million Tiny Pieces, which was featured at this year’s Pacific Playwrights Festival at South Coast Rep (who commissioned it as part of the Elizabeth George Commission). Other plays of his include Merge, about the rise and fall of Atari, and Plainclothes, about retail security guards (which won the 2019 M. Elizabeth Osborn New Play Award).

Spenser tells Brian about the family influences that got him into the arts, the support he received as a new playwright in Chicago, and about how and why he gravitates toward large-cast plays.

This episode can also be found here.

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