Bridget Carpenter has written many plays. Her work has been produced by Steppenwolf, Center Stage, Berkeley Repertory Company, Trinity Rep, Syracuse Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, among many others. Plays include FALL (Susan Smith Blackburn Prize), THE FACULTY ROOM (Kesselring Prize), UP, and THE DEATH OF THE FATHER OF PSYCHOANALYSIS (& ANNA). Among her numerous honors and awards are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Princess Grace Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group. Ms. Carpenter received a M.F.A. from Brown University and has taught playwriting in college, high school, grammar school, and prison. She is currently the Co-Executive Producer/Writer on NBC’s Friday Night Lights. An alumna of New Dramatists, Bridget lives in Los Angeles

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The Faculty Room

Q & A with Bridget Carpenter

Q: Your play, UP, is currently being produced by the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. UP concerns the family of a man who used weather balloons to take flight in a lawn chair, and the extended impact of this event on their lives. What drew you to expand upon this now famous tale?

The real lawn-chair-man, Larry Walters, made his lawn chair fly in the 1980’s. As a kid, I remember hearing about the flight, and the idea was wholly intoxicating to me: you could FLY using something as mundane as a lawn chair?! Fantastic. Many years later, I read a New Yorker story by George Plimpton about Larry Walters and his incredible flight. My original feelings of wonder came flooding back—only this time, they were mixed with surprise and sadness, because I learned that he committed suicide ten years after his flight. I couldn’t stop thinking of him in his chair long ago, high up above it all, how peaceful it must have been, how magical. And . . . that was it. At the same time, I didn’t want to write a play about his life; I felt (and I still feel) his life stands alone. But the image of a man in the sky stayed with me. When I can’t stop thinking of an image, it finds its way into a play. And in this particular case, the image not only found its way in; it became the play’s genesis. I wanted to invent a life for a man who would do something that poetic and intoxicating and foolhardy; I wanted to create a family for him—an ever after (though perhaps not a 'happily.') Larry Walter’s flight inspired UP; everything else is invented.

Q: Your plays, FALL, THE FACULTY ROOM, and UP are each quite distinct in tone. Can you write a little bit about your approach for each play? How did your process for the plays differ? Or did it?

FALL was kind of a love letter to lindy hop (and to being fifteen). I wrote THE FACULTY ROOM right after I wrote FALL and I deliberately wanted that play to be in a single location, locked, claustrophobic, because FALL had been so airy and expansive—lots of dancing, scenes taking place underwater, spontaneous combustion. UP followed THE FACULTY ROOM and in hindsight it seems clear I wanted to get out of that room. I guess I like to live in different theatrical neighborhoods. I love spectacle, and I also love kitchen-sink drama. UP has some of each. I tend to think about plays for a long time before I write, and then I write the first draft in a mad rush. The day I finished UP, I lost my voice completely and could not make a sound for two days. That was interesting.

Q: When and/or how did you know that you wanted to create plays?

I wanted to be a writer since the time I could read. In fact I can't really separate my earliest memories of reading from the wish to write. I always imagined that I would write stories and books. But when I was fifteen, I saw a play by Craig Lucas—Blue Window—and it changed me, something shifted inside; I went home and thought and thought about those characters, and I thought, "Maybe I could do that." Later that year I wrote my first play—and my high school produced it. The night of the production I stood at the back of the auditorium watching the audience watch my play, woozy with their reactions. And my high school drama teacher, Mr. Mason, leaned over to me and whispered, "You will forget everything about high school. Everything. But you'll remember this." He was right. I was hooked. And in college I lucked out with the greatest playwriting teacher in America: Paula Vogel. If my little high school production hooked me, Paula reeled me in. I think I'm going to go write her a thank you note right now.