In process: a podcast interview with Milo Cramer, Ikechukwu Ufomadu, and Alexandra Tatarsky

CHELCIE PARRY: Hello and welcome back to Footnote from Playwrights Horizons. My name is Chelcie, I'm our digital content producer, and today we've got three incredible conversations with the masterminds behind the three rep shows coming up this fall at Playwrights. We've got Amusements, we've got Sad Boys in Harpy Land, and we've got School Pictures.

So without further ado, I bring you the three folks behind those three incredible shows. Here we go.

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CHELCIE: Hello.

MILO CRAMER: Hi.

CHELCIE: How are you?

MILO: I'm good. How are you?

CHELCIE: Excellent. I'm, I'm great. I'm great. Will you tell the people at home who you are and what show you're doing at Playwrights This Season?

MILO: I am Milo. For years, I have been working on this show called School Pictures, um, which is a series of songs. Each song paints a different portrait of a young student, inspired by five years I spent working as a private tutor in New York.

CHELCIE: I have to know, if you were writing a song about your time in middle school or junior high, what would the name of it be and what would it be about? Or what would it sound like? What's the vibe?

MILO: Well, when I was in elementary school, until I was in fifth grade, I was in speech therapy because I couldn't pronounce ruh, kuh, chuh, thuh, zuh.

I also even struggled with tuh. So I remember, like, I couldn't say cookie. That was a particularly brutal word. And girl was a really hard, guh. And I remember, like. Yeah, like being teased on the bus and like really losing my shit and like throwing my backpack because nobody understood me. So I think when I was young at that age, what I really craved is a facility with language that I didn't have.

And I think that if you asked me at that time what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would say I wanted to be an actor or a poet, you know, because, um, no one can understand me. But, yeah, no, then, I mean, I was always, like, very, um, If I had to write a song about myself, I think another thing is, like, just, uh, I struggle, as I think many of us do, with executive functioning, a phrase I only recently learned, but little things stress me out so much.

If I have to write an email, it will take me, like, a professional email, it will take me, like, an hour to, like, psych myself up, convince myself I should do it, write many drafts, and the email is like some short little thing that's like confirming 1 p. m. today, and then after I send it I have to like process that I sent it and be like, oh my god, does that person hate me now? Did I say the right thing? But I was really like that as a child, and so many of the songs are just really basically about, like, Doing homework, like accomplishing very simple things that I think a lot of people find very overwhelming and that are hard to talk about like, Oh, I left my book at school and now I'm screaming at my mom and like, we don't know, like, and the future is on the line vaguely.

Um, yeah, I think another thing about the songs is that because the people are young, we look at them with love and tenderness. And it can be really hard to look at yourself with love and tenderness. Um, so even if sometimes the songs deal with some really dark things or can be very critical of certain things in the world, there's an enormous tenderness in them, which maybe I would have a hard time having for myself if I were trying to write a song about myself.

CHELCIE: Yeah. I do also when I think of my childhood and right now, I'm like, well, adults then would look at child me and be like, well, your problems, you know, the world is not going to end. And so I'm trying so hard to be like, my problems now, the world is not going to end. And so, yeah, that's like a really interesting difference that you see, like, kids problems and, like, kids lives. You're like, oh, let me hold you, like, Oh my gosh, right. But then once you're an adult, it's like, good luck, kid, everything sucks, and we're all doomed. But it's really, you know. Yeah. Could use some of that child time innocence that, that we had. Yeah.

So you did mention that you're not the most prolific musician, which is great. So how, how did you land on music as the medium instead of? Maybe poetry or, you know, like just doing skits as opposed to full music.

MILO: Music is the best thing in the world. And I think when I, some of my earliest memories of going to the theater, theater I was really excited by, it was often because it was like something I had never seen before. I remember seeing, I saw when a workshop production of Daniel Fish's Oklahoma at Bard college when I was like 14. And it was unlike anything I'd ever seen. You know, they served chili to the audience. You were in this, like, kind of makeshift church basement space. And, uh, it was nothing like Oklahoma as you knew it. And I remember being like, wow! Like, I didn't know theater could be this good. I didn't know you could take art seriously. I didn't know... Or I also saw a production of Orestes, uh, the Greek tragedy directed by Joanne Echolitis, also when I was like 15. And it was like, there was water and blood and smoke and nudity, and all these things now that I recognize almost as like, European stage cliches. But at the time, I was like, wow. And I barely remember like, the story. But so I'm very interested in kind of theater events that kind of like, are really thoughtful about what the event is, and kind of performance ness, and event ness. So one thing I like about the show, and partly because I myself am performing it, I get to kind of be very, very playful in my relationship with the audience and my relationship to the act of performing.

And sometimes it's almost like I'm not performing. Sometimes it's like I'm really, really performing and that, and then also during the pandemic. It's just so sad how theater was so decimated by the pandemic. And so the show has a ritual quality. It's like I am alone performing the cycle of stories, bearing my soul, to use a very corny phrase, but it's like this very, very, very introspective, uh, scary to perform thing that I do for people. It's like there is an elegance to the -- and I love plays, and scene work is so complicated and juicy, and there's like, you know, playwriting, because there's what the playwright thinks, there's what the character says, there's how the, can be so complicated and achieve like dizzying levels of irony, but another thing about music is like it makes people's lives better in a visceral everyday way, because it is so healing.

I recently went to this show at the Whitney. I forget the artist's name. It's this very cool, buzzy show that's all about class and labor. But what's funny is that it's at the Whitney, so it's like, kind of like hard to access. And I was just thinking about, and even though some of the artworks were very thoughtful and beautiful, a song is doing more for me on a daily basis than this incredibly sophisticated gesture.

CHELCIE: So you're a playwright by trade, as you've just mentioned, so why was it that you wanted to play this part as opposed to writing it and handing it off to another actor? It is extremely vulnerable and personal.

MILO: And I think that I was in a place, ontologically, where I was like, I want to be responsible for the words coming out of my body. I don't want to put words in someone else's mouth. I have no right to speak for anyone else. And so something about centering, uh, myself, uh, was actually about just wanting to be transparent and accountable. Does that make sense? And then also the writing is so connected to how it's performed. Like there's parts that are screamed and parts that are whispered. And so it came from like the show was created by doing it over and over alone in my bedroom. It was not created by sitting at a Word document and typing. So it was like oral first and it has been the time of my life, like, working on the show got me through the pandemic. Like every day I would sing the songs again and make little changes and it was like such a dorky joy, but it was, um, yeah, awesome. But no, playwriting, I am in an MFA program for playwriting right now and it is awesome.

CHELCIE: You've taken the show around a bit. From your basement to the Wilma Theater in Philly. And now you're here. Where you were an intern ten years ago, which is a great roundabout. Do you feel like the show has changed based on where you're at?

MILO: So we did the show in Philadelphia. It was so cool. I had never been to Philadelphia before, really. And my wonderful friend Morgan, who's the director, um, works at the Wilma Theater there, which is an amazing theater. And I was so happy and honored to be there, but it was daunting because I didn't really know anyone.

And when I was performing it, I was really anxious about getting COVID because if I got COVID, the show was canceled. And so I would do the show for audiences of strangers. And then I would often not even go out to say hello after because I didn't want to get COVID. So I would just go back to my hotel room and be alone.

So it was the most surreal lifestyle where like, uh, if you were, if a stranger was watching my day, it's suddenly I'm going into this room. and singing for all these strangers and then going home and not talking to anyone. So it was very daunting and so it's also like, I don't know what I'm communicating or to whom. However , we did do a show for like 300 high school students, which was at 10 a. m. That was like the scariest day of my life. 300 high school students, 10 a. m. And they asked, afterwards there was a talk back with them, and they asked... interesting questions. They were like, where did you get those shoes? You know, they were like, how much was the set? Um, they were like, are you a real tutor? They were funny. They were like skeptical and amazing and then I've also done the show you know, for my parents. That was kind of daunting. I kind of did it for them very casually like because I was like guys I'm gonna do this thing. What the fuck do you think?

No, but I've done the show in really small intimate things and that's the best and then in the Philadelphia It was this 300 seat theater. So that was quite different. I'm very very excited to do it here. It's about New York I love New York And I love Playwrights Horizons, so I, and also, I've, even though it's not a play, play, it, I am, that is the tradition that I am trained in and work in and come out of.

You know, when I was reading all these plays for Playwrights Horizons ten years ago as an intern, the things you're thinking about are, what is the artist trying to do? Are, do they do it or not? And then you're thinking, okay, is, is what this artist is trying to do Aligned with the values of our theater and so you just see it's like kind of very open ended questions about like, what is art for, who is it for, what is quote unquote interesting.

Um, so I think the show, I've arrived at the show through working through all of that. I'm thinking like, well, who the fuck am I? What the fuck is worth doing?

CHELCIE: It may not be a play in like a traditional sense but so many of the best works come from molding the form, you know? Yeah. Not to get too heady with it.

If you could time travel back to Little Milo. And give them any words of encouragement, what would you say to get him through those troubling times? Little Milo?

MILO: Honestly, I feel like Little Milo. I would like some words of wisdom and encouragement from Little Milo and not the other way around.

I mean, I think Little Milo was kind of like, just very -- I'm at a moment in my life where I'm like, God, what am I going to do for the rest of my life? And am I going to have children? And do I? Where should I live, and what will become of me, and how does one, am I gonna grow up, and how do I do it? And um, I think little Milo, who like had hair past my shoulders, and always wore mismatched socks, and wore huge t shirts that were like often covered in food stains, and like, was like, I'm a poet!

Like I was like such a little freak, um, there's a kind of intensity, and passion, and confidence and And embrace of the kind of chaotic that I, that I miss and that I've, that we all have to kind of sacrifice and kill a little bit in order to just participate in email culture. So I'd go back to little Milo, take some of the inspiration.

CHELCIE: Great. Thank you so much.

MILO: Oh my gosh. Thank you. This has been great.

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CHELCIE: Hello. How are you?

IKE UFOMADU: Hi! Thanks, I'm good. I'm good. How are you?

CHELCIE: I'm excellent. I'm excellent. Would you introduce yourself to the people?

IKE: Hello people. My name is Ikechukwu Ufomadu. I often go by Ike. And I am here to tell you a bit about a show that I'll be bringing to Playwrights called Amusements.

CHELCIE: Excellent. You are not new to Playwrights Horizons. You're coming back to us for a second time. You were with us for Clare Barron's Dance Nation. What's it like to be back? This time filling the shoes of the writer as well as a performer?

IKE: Let me first say that, yeah, it's funny because you know that thing that happens where you think something is two years ago, but then you look at the dates and you're like, oh wow, it's actually half a decade ago. So it feels a little surreal that so much time has passed, but it also feels like that production just happened yesterday. So it's a little strange. Not to get too, I don't know, heady or away from the topic at hand, but it does, it's caused me to deeply reflect on the nature of time and how hard it is to get a grasp on it.

CHELCIE: What's it like to be here as a writer?

IKE: Also seems very strange. I would not have imagined that I would be back here in that capacity.

CHELCIE: Have you often thought about writing for theater, or is this kind of a new love of yours?

IKE: This is kind of a new little experiment, I guess. I have been working, basically when I started writing material, I was, like, more firmly planted in the world of theater and kind of like downtown performance. And then, when I started making material, I had drifted over into the comedy world, just because it was much easier to, like, try out new ideas. And, yeah, I was mostly trying to create things that were humorous. And so, I found myself in a more comedy scene. And I'm basically coming back to theater , still, I guess, writing in the same way. I guess it feels like I'm working in the way that I've... I've been working for the past few years, but now doing that work in a different context. So I'm curious as to how things will be received, how it will feel to do things that I typically perform in a basement in Brooklyn somewhere for an audience here in the, uh, in the heart of Times Square. Is this the heart of Times Square?

CHELCIE: I like to consider us like the elbow a little bit, the elbow of Times Square, because we're, you know, we're between ninth and 10th. We're far enough away that you can sweat on the way to the subway.

You kind of touched on it, you know, you've done a lot of kind of going between comedy and theater and acting and writing. You've done late night tv, film, a whole, a whole lot of things. So what do all of these different parts of your career fulfill for you?

IKE: I like looking at familiar things and somehow seeing something new in them. I feel like I do that a lot with material of trying to take things that are familiar and changing the context or tweaking some aspect of it so it's sort of experienced as this sort of new and strange thing.

And it occurs to me in this very moment that part of going between these kind of different worlds is, yeah, like while I'm working in one area, and then hop over to another area, I feel like maybe you sort of look at it in a slightly different way or a slightly askew angle that maybe reveals some potential for creating something new. Going back and forth between all these different ways of working makes each of them feel kind of new and strange. Maybe I don't like to feel like I'm too settled into one area. Um, cause then maybe I'll start to take something for granted if I get too comfortable in any particular, one particular situation.

CHELCIE: In your life, has there been some kind of pivotal moment where you knew that you had to entertain, you had to write, you had to perform?

IKE: How did we end up here in life? I think no, I don't think, I don't know, because there's so many little moments. Yeah, it feels more like there's like an accumulation of many everyday decisions that kind of lead one down, this particular path of living. I don't know if there was like a big Eureka or if it was more of just like, a slow burn. There was a moment in 2012, which I mark as the start of writing material and performing where I felt like -- I hope this doesn't sound too intense -- I felt like I needed to repay a debt of gratitude to my mom, who's always been pretty supportive of these pursuits. In that year in particular, I remember feeling particularly stuck in figuring out how to navigate life in New York and trying to figure out how to do what I wanted to do. And I felt like that was a very grounding feeling -- thinking of the support that I've received up to this point. And wanting to follow through, sounds too pedestrian, but a way to, I was like, you know what? Let me honor the effort that has been made on my behalf by giving it a good go with this entertaining and writing and performing.

CHELCIE: So for other young artists that are out there and they're looking to have as diverse of a career as the one you have had and you are currently having, what are some words of wisdom or encouragement that they may not have heard elsewhere? Maybe something your, your mom told you that, that made you want to honor that support.

IKE: Well, one thing I think that's important that sounds dumb, but, you know, doing your best at whatever you are doing in that current moment I think is important because actually, it's hard to predict how the thing you're currently doing influence s your trajectory, or how the thing that you're doing now will come into play in the future.

Particularly if one is like hopping around from different things, it can be hard to know exactly how point A will connect to point B and C and et cetera. But I think one increases the likelihood of an interesting connection being found by just doing your best with whatever's in front of you, and then, you know, nothing is ever wasted, you know, so, even if something feels like a failure or just feels like some one off random thing, I think having in mind that nothing's ever wasted keeps one open to the possibilities of things connecting in wild fun ways.

So those are words I would share. And indeed have just shared. Have just done so.

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CHELCIE: How are ya?

ALEX TATARSKY: Good. A hesitant good to start things off.

CHELCIE: Hesitant good. That's what we like to see.

ALEX: Hesitant good, always.

CHELCIE: If you'll tell the people at home who you are and what show you're working on for Playwrights, that would be great.

ALEX: My Name is Alex Tatarsky and I am the writer and performer of Sad Boys in Harpy Land here at Playwrights.

CHELCIE: What would be your one line elevator pitch?

ALEX: Ha ha ha. Sad Boys in Harpy Land is my attempt to go deep into the woods of despair and see what we can learn there and alchemize that into something raucous and absurd and delirious.

CHELCIE: Raucous is an incredible word. That's great. It does make me feel like I'm going to listen to like folk music, but like chaotically while I'm there, you know?

ALEX: Yeah, and maybe with someone like chewing on all the instruments. And they might be rabid. But in a fun way. A Musician who just got rabies attempting to play a song and then sort of giving up halfway through and drooling everywhere. That is a better pitch for the show. Well, it also sounds like a fun Saturday night to me.

CHELCIE: We're going to be friends. How long have you been working on the show?

ALEX: Too long. I've been working on this show for my whole life in some sense, but it's an episodic work, actually, and we're in the third iteration of it, so about ten years ago, when I was 24, I took on this absurdist and doomed task to adapt a very long novel that nobody reads alongside my life for the rest of my life, and so we are in the midst of that ongoing lifelong project.

CHELCIE: Wow. Ten years ago. That's great. And so now you're, you're at the height of it. Off Broadway!

ALEX: Yes, exciting to have it all be downhill from here.

CHELCIE: So you've been downtown with the show, you know, you've taken it around 10 years. You said you're in kind of the third iteration of it. What' s the experience of moving it around? Do you ever feel like you need to adapt it based on maybe a new audience?

ALEX: Yeah, it's, it's never finished, which is part of the project, like a devotion to unfinishedness and to putting a state of coming apart and unraveling on stage and welcoming that as a mode of writing and a mode of performing. So I would say I identify as a clown more than a playwright. So this is an exciting new context for me to be in. And clowns are always responding to the audience and the room. That's sort of the material. Like working with nothingness as sculptural material in conversation with an audience and in response to the context. So everywhere that I have taken this exploration, it kind of changes radically in response to... what's happening in that room. And I'm really thrilled, curious, horrified, delighted to be taking it to playwrights and kind of have that framing about what it means to make a play.

CHELCIE: Yeah, that's also very exciting because if someone's seen the show before and they loved it, they can get a ticket for it now and see the same show, but with some different feelings and just kind of like a different air in the room, that's awesome.

How has this differed from your other work, which I would love to ask you about your other work later, because you've done so much. How is this in particular, though, a different experience?

ALEX: This is perhaps the most maddening and somehow all encompassing work that I've done because it really feels like a bizarre, lifelong project.

So other pieces have been explorations of, for instance, compost, one of my ongoing obsessions, or sort of clown history in relation to political history, or devouring different kinds of Americana myths. But this project for me is really about Digging into and questioning the fiction of the self, like how we are taught to become individuals often in ways that causes us to harm ourselves, harm others, harm the earth. And how do we undo that together without totally losing it? So it does feel like it can, it can drive me to a certain sort of spiral that I want to welcome into the piece, and in that way it's very different from other projects like really being, trying to be brave enough to go down the spiral with an audience.

Which can be rough. Because they're right there, you can see their reactions. It's an exercise in total humiliation. It's been great and terrifying and rewarding all at the same time.

CHELCIE: Amazing. So talking about your other work. You've been to Russia and Mexico and China and you've taught and you've worked in poetry and performance and you've toured and all these different things. What is a little insight into kind of how you found yourself? How did you kind of set out to do at first? Or, you know, the act of discovery in life, what was that like?

ALEX: I never set out to do any of this. It's been an ongoing accident and surprise and gift and curse. I would say a lot of it was determined by the fact that I could never figure out how to get a job. And the only thing anyone would ever ask me to do, end up turning into this life. So, a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Almost like a philosophy or an ethics of scrappiness and scraps, so that informs everything I do, like how can you respond to the situation and learn from it and kind of like take the resources that you need to say the things you want to say and also help distribute those resources when you have access to them, to your friends, to your community, to your partners in crime.

So that can take you all kinds of places. It's like, I always just want to find the people that I want to be talking to about stuff. And that can take many, many different forms to just be having the kinds of conversations you want to have. And digging in with different kinds of people.

CHELCIE: Sounds very much like a, just say yes kind of a journey .

ALEX: Oh my god, a total yes and. Total clowning prom. Until you reach a moment in life when you start to have to say some no's. But generally, yes will always make the wildest, strangest things happen. So I've been very, yeah, lucky to get to do that.

My dad used to used to say that being brave is, is really about being terrified, but going for it anyway, so I try to keep that in mind. Like being so scared all the time is actually the bravest thing ever, because you're still trying.

CHELCIE: I'm sure he's very pleased that that's stuck in your mind. I feel like any time someone gets to be the quoted, like, this person is my muse, they're like, "wow, I like said that offhand. That's incredible that you're sticking with that." That's great.

ALEX: You're welcome, daddy.

CHELCIE: If you could meet little Alex again through the time traveling ether, what kind of, What, you know, inspiration would you give them and what kind of knowledge would you impart with them after, you know, living many years of doing these, you know, crazy things all over the place?

ALEX: Um, very good and very difficult question. I think I would give little Alex kind of the same advice that I would give slightly bigger Alex, which is to. Do the things because you're curious and not for any kind of external validation but to remember that making strange clown shows is the best way to figure out a certain kind of thing. To like, be in the not knowing and be open to, that you really can't predict in advance. So it's not a life that you choose in order to make a living. It's the life that you choose because that's the way that you've decided works to figure some things out. And that's going to be a journey that continues forever, but can go on the support and the belief in it has to come from inside because the world very often does not support those kinds of endeavors.

CHELCIE: I have to say, I've been thinking the last few minutes, you said clown history is something that you've, you've got some experience in, and I just have to know, like, what is, what do you mean clown history? Do you have a favorite fun fact? I need to know more.

ALEX: Yeah, well, I definitely think a lot about how the trickster is definitely a key part all societies and cultures. And so it's exciting for me to identify that trace all over. But specifically in the US, I've developed an obsession with how clown has become an insult, a slur, you might say, and often used to talk about our politicians. So that's one particular strain of clown history in the context of the US that I'm super fascinated by, like the very first political campaigns followed the same touring routes laid out by the first American big top circuses.

And so there is this real marriage, I think, in the U. S. specifically between different forms of entertainment and, and commerce and kind of creating, cultivating, um, Consumption among viewers that can often distract from, from the, the real issues. So I've just been kind of like identifying how often politicians masquerade as clowns and use the clown legacy towards sort of devious ends of kind of keeping people's attention but not actually saying anything or doing anything meaningful.

And so it's like finding where the real clown can poke through and trouble all of that and call that into question and sort of topple the king. I think in the U. S. sometimes our kings wear the, the mask of the jester to kind of hide what they're doing, which is often very deliberate and quite violent and vile.

CHELCIE: You've given me much to think about on the topic

ALEX: Once you start thinking about clowns, you just can't stop.

CHELCIE: Oh wow. Incredible. Amazing. Thank you so much. And um, I'm really looking forward to seeing your show. Yeah, thank you.

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