Interview with The Cannibal Diaries Playwright Paco Jose Madden
Get the skinny on Paco’s body of work
- So Paco, you’re the Playwright in Residence of 23/24 for B3 Theater. What’s formed your relationship with this theater?
I met Ilana Lydia, Artistic Director at B3, through a Write Club with Brelby Theater Company (now Brelby Productions) several years ago. Through that experience she became familiar with my aesthetic. Several of my protagonists tend to be women in roles you might not expect, like per se a 13-year-old female cannibal. This fits in with B3’s mission to produce works with feminist/queer underpinnings. B3’s first production of my work was ROSEMARY’S BABY GOES TO HIGH SCHOOL, which featured a girl-gone-bad AKA the devi’s daughter who actually saves the world. Unfortunately, the production was cut short due to the pandemic.
2. Tell us the story behind The Cannibal Diaries. What started you thinking about the premise?
I wanted to write something on cannibalism for a while. It’s a taboo subject and not something often discussed around the dinner table (unless someone is the dinner). The problem was I just didn’t have a story. Then one day in 2019, I came across a Fox News clip in which Fox contributor Katherine Timpf likened Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s New Deal to the Donner Party and cannibalism. You can find the…
