I Interview Playwrights Part 781: Gregg Kreutz
Five years ago, playwright Adam Szymkowicz began a blog with a simple, yet intriguing, idea: to interview playwrights. Aptly titled, I Interview Playwrights, the blog has now grown to include the inspirations, challenges, advice, and shameless plugs of over 700 playwrights, including Theresa Rebeck, David Adjmi, Annie Baker, Jordan Harrison and Craig Wright. We’re thrilled to now be sharing some of his interviews with Samuel French playwrights here on Breaking Character. Check out the below, click here for an exclusive interview with Adam, and don’t forget to check out his blog for more.
Name: Gregg Kreutz
Hometown: Madison, Wisconsin
Current Town: New York City
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’ve just finished a three person comedy called Hollywood Dog. Set in a Red Hook Brooklyn walkup, it charts the desperate effort of an actor and a director to extract the reprehensible movie they made in college from the clutches of the actor’s moralistic wife.
Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: Maybe the theater bug first bit me when, in the third grade, I starred as the district attorney in the oral-hygiene drama; The Tooth, the Whole Tooth, And Nothing but the Tooth.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: Less obsessed with societal mission, more respectful of comedy.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Alan Ayckbourn is to me the greatest living playwright. Also Ray Cooney — author of such British farces as Run for your Wife and Move over Mrs. Markham — gave me very good advice early in my career. He said “For farce to work, a plausible situation needs to slowly unravel. If it starts out too frenetically it will wear out the audience and they’ll (horrifying thought) stop laughing.”
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: Theater where the characters are convincing, the situations are compelling, and the play moves in an exciting arc.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Study successful plays for their structure and find a company of actors willing to take a chance on a newcomer.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: My most recent Samuel French play — Death by Golf — can be seen this September at Conklin’s Barn II Dinner Theater in Goodfield Illinois.
