Howdid you realize you wanted to write and act?
I started writing poetryin adolescence and that served as a pressure release valve for the intensefeelings I had. [In high school I was] cast in Evita. Seminal, it showed me another level of emotionalexperiencea level in which my deep feelings were not overblown, but perfectlysuited.
You’repassionate on the subject of mountaintop-removal coal mining. What is that andhow did you become aware of it?
It’s a form of coalmining where companies clear-cut forest, then use heavy explosives to breakapart the mountain. They dig up the broken earthup to 1,000 feetand depositit in nearby valleys, often burying streams. Then they use massive machinescalled draglines to harvest the exposed coal seams. The coal gets shipped topower plants all over the world, destroying the Appalachian Mountains for cheap electricity. I became aware of this process inMay ’07 when our theater company was asked to create a street theater piece onthe subject for a media action event outside the U.N. and a fund-raisingconcert in Harlem. Out of that grew afull-length project which I’m working on now.
Whatwas your relationship to the natural world prior to your visit to Appalachia?
As a kid, I collectedpieces of plants. I’d make a mixture, drop it inside a leaf, fold it up and,making a wish, tuck it into the crevice of a lilac bush. [My wishes] tended tobe pretty idealistic, things like world peace. Living in N.Y.C. was the first Ifelt completely cut off from [nature], so, getting away to Appalachia,looking at these untouched green hills, it was like this desiccated spongeinside me just welled up. It was hard to go back to the city and stand in asubway tunnel again.
Whydo you believe theater to be an effective tool for political and environmentalchange?
Political theaterpresents a much-needed alternative lens on our reality. Health care is thetopic lately. There’s a lot of pathos around it in the medialook at this poor,little grandma with no health insurance. That’s not compassion. It’sexploitation. Its effect is not to galvanize people to make change, but to getus feeling sorry for ourselves, which is, hands down, the best way toneutralize a person or group; they’ll be so busy looking at the ground, theywon’t see what’s going on around them.
To start feelinginspired, people must see activists, self-starters, rule breakers who are notsettling for what they’ve got. I want the play I’m writing now to confront thisissue and show a person who goes from feeling put upon and constrained tofeeling empowered and free. Theater is one of the only public forums where wecan celebrate the rising up of the human spirit, where we can show peopleacting on behalf of other people or the environment and succeeding. That issomething our world needs badly right now. We need to believe that there’s analternative pathbecause there is.
