Rob Urbinati received a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon. In New York City, he has directed for the Culture Project, Classic Stage Company, Pearl Theatre, Abingdon Theatre, Westbeth, Vital Theatre, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, the Fringe Festival, the Connelly Theatre, New York University, Greenwich St. Theatre, New York Music Theatre Festival, and the Public Theatre. Rob is Director of New Play Development at Queens Theatre in the Park, where he curates the Immigrant Voices Project, a new play program which develops plays by writers who represent the diverse demographic of New York City.

Check out Rob' s Plays with Samuel French
Hazelwood Jr. High
West Moon Street

Q & A with Rob Urbinati

Q: Talk to us for a minute about your play HAZELWOOD JR. HIGH, which is about the true story of four girls in Southern Indiana in 1992 who tortured and murdered their classmate. Much of the script is based on actual court room transcripts and police reports, so obviously a lot of research went into this for you. What was it about this story that drew you in? Was it a challenge to adapt these voices to the page, especially considering not only the emotional background of each of the girls, but also their ages (the characters range from twelve to sixteen years-old)?

I had read two "true crime" books about the case, which included notes that the girls had written and tossed to each other in class. The notes were, by turns, naive, tender, romantic, lewd and threatening. They became the basis of the play. They were written in the simplest language, yet most of the notes suggest a deep joy or anguish. It was clear that the girls did not have the words to communicate what they were experiencing. That was what first drew me in - the contrast between the rage and the excitement the girls were feeling, and the ordinary words in which they expressed themselves. As I continued to research, it became clear that the murder, as horrible as it was, was essentially a "vehicle" by which the girls could prove the depth of their friendships. "If you're really my friend, you´ll help me kill Shanda." So while the play covers the events leading up to the murder, the night of the murder, and the events following, the focus is always on the testing of allegiances - the typical things that young teens grapple with. In some ways, HAZELWOOD JR. HIGH is a "reactionary" play. I find that many plays written about young kids feel as if they´re written by adults. Not that the dialogue is inappropriate, but there´s an adult attempt to provide psychological and sociological context, as well as judgment. I tried to write HAZELWOOD as if it were written by one of the character's friends - just the events as they unfolded, without a "moral compass." Of course, each scene in the play was written to advance the theme of allegiance and betrayal, but I tried to disguise that as much as possible, and resist the adult urge to guide or interpret. Having the real-life girls' actual words from the notes, court transcripts, and audio taped testimony was key, not only for the dialogue, but more importantly, for perspective. Their conversations in school months before the murder - about crushes, hairdos, clothes, parents, music - were almost identical to the conversations they had the night of the murder, riding around with a battered girl in the trunk. This doesn´t suggest that they were unfeeling, but that they had no language to convey what they were experiencing. The best productions of HAZELWOOD have communicated this disproportion.

Q: WEST MOON STREET is also an adaptation from another source – albeit much, much more light hearted! Here you’ve drawn inspiration from an Oscar Wilde short story, creating a delightful comedy of manners in which a hapless young gentleman encounters a mysterious palm reader to disastrous (and hilarious) effects. How did you first encounter the Wilde short story? Did you know, then, that you wanted to adapt it for the stage? What challenges do you think a comedy of manners might present to modern actors and audiences?

After HAZELWOOD, which in many ways explores the failure of language, I wanted something completely different. The girls in HAZELWOOD have trouble expressing the simplest of thoughts, and I wanted to write articulate characters whose words roll off their tongues. So one summer I read "The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde," to absorb his voice and maybe find something to adapt. There are worst ways to spend a summer. His novella, "Lord Arthur Saville´s Crime," was ideal for my purposes. While I´ve enjoyed adaptations of full-length novels like "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights," the process of adapting those kinds of works is one of "whittling down" the plot to two or so hours. With a novella or short story, it's more of a "building up." Instead of eliminating characters and scenes, the writer has to create them. This is much more appealing to me. It´s easier to get my own voice into this kind of adaptation, though it´s clearly based on another writer´s style. What surprised me about WEST MOON STREET was that even though I set out to write the antithesis of HAZELWOOD, it turns out that while stylistically opposed, thematically, the two plays have much in common. They both deal with a group of characters in a tight social circle who are oblivious, or at least choose to behave as if they were oblivious to the moral consequences of their behavior. Both WEST MOON STREET and HAZELWOOD JR. HIGH end with a murder, and in both plays, the characters consider the murder only in terms of how it impacts themselves, and their relationships. Laurie is thrilled when she convinces Hope to help her kill Shanda in HAZELWOOD JR. HIGH because it proves Hope´s loyalty to her. And Sybil is delighted that Lord Arthur has murdered the palm reader in WEST MOON STREET because it proves that he loves her.

As for the challenges of a comedy of manners for contemporary audiences, it´s important for me that the play itself is not seen a "museum piece," and has some relevance for today´s audiences. While there are no contemporary references in WEST MOON STREET, the idea of a group of self-absorbed characters whose only goal is to satisfy their selfish desires is, shall we say, not remote for today´s audiences. Also, it´s important that productions of the play don´t struggle to capture a historically accurate period style. WEST MOON STREET is not an Oscar Wilde play - it´s a contemporary "take" on a Wilde play, and the best productions I've seen of the play reflect this sensibility in various ways.

Q: You are not only an established Playwright, but also the Director of New Play Development at Queens Theatre in the Park, and you’ve directed various shows in extremely well-established theatres throughout New York and across the country. How does being a Director help you as a Playwright, and vice-versa?

Before I began to direct, I was a Theatre Consultant for Home Box Office. I saw about 150 plays a year, and wrote evaluations. At that time, HBO was not interested in the production, even though that’s what I was seeing. They were interested, exclusively, in the writing. So I had to separate what a playwright does from what the director does. With new plays, this was particularly challenging, and it’s how I became interested in directing. When I began to direct, I found that I saw plays from an “audience” perspective. I had to learn the tools to communicate with actors and designers. To do this, I directed every chance I had, every type of play, anywhere I could. (I also went to grad school, where I learned more about Research Methods than directing, which influenced the type of plays I would write, although I didn’t know this at the time). I had directed a lot of plays before I ever wrote one, so when I began to write, I had a good sense of what I call the "motor" of a play - how to shape a scene, how to propel the action forward, how to give actors something to play - the things that directors and actors discover in rehearsal. I find that reading new plays, and I read over 100 a year for Queens Theatre, is also very helpful to me as a writer. How a good play can be “improved” is a delicate and complex consideration. I thoroughly enjoy mixing up writing and directing and reading plays. I read at least three a week, whatever else I’m doing. Writing is a solitary occupation, and after working on a play for a few months, I'm eager to get into the rehearsal room and direct, which is a group effort, with the attendant challenges and delights. And after a few months of that, I'm eager to get back to writing!

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

Strangely, I never harbored even a remote desire to write a play. In 1995, I was in the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, which was its inaugural year. Nagle Jackson, a lovely and talented man, came and spoke to us. He said, "If you want to be attached to a play as a director, write it." I applied for his "Adapting for the Stage Workshop" at the Directors Company and got in, with a proposal for a play based on the true crime books I had read about the murder of Shanda Sharer. So I wrote HAZELWOOD to have something to direct. At first, since I had never written a play, I planned to use only the notes the girls had written. It was to be a sort of "epistolary" play, although that seems like a lofty term to use with these characters. Sometimes, two girls had written about the same event, and with Nagle´s encouragement, I began to write scenes, and eventually, a play. I directed a one-act version of HAZELWOOD for the Directors Company. The following year, Scott Elliott directed the full-length version for The New Group.

Q: What inspires you to take on a new project?

I take on projects that involve research. Ever since grad school, I´ve enjoyed burying myself in research. I could live in the library, or in a recliner, reading and taking notes. It´s a struggle to pull myself out and begin to write. One of my new plays, MAMA´S BOY, is about Lee Harvey Oswald's mother, Marguerite. There are thousands of books written about the Kennedy assassination, and many don't mention her at all. Those that do usually dismiss her in a few sentences. She is a footnote to history. I became fascinated by these brief references, which described her as eccentric, or psychopathic. I knew I wanted to write a play with this woman as a central character, a play that took place "in the shadow of history." Luckily, there are a few books that take her seriously, most notably, Gerald Ford's "Portrait of an Assassin" and Norman Mailer's "Oswald's Tale." And then there is her testimony to the Warren Commission - 200 pages of rich character detail. After a year or so of research, I began to write.

Q: Have you ever come across a production that made you see one of your plays in a new or unexpected way?

I learned that a theatre in Texas, Houston Family Arts Center, was doing a production of WEST MOON STREET. I was surprised, because I had not written that play with "family audiences" in mind. I began an email exchange with the director of that production, Lisa Garza, and we struck up a friendship. She explained the theatre's mission, which is not to do "children's theatre," but plays that the entire family could attend. This ruled out plays with strong language or sexual content. WEST MOON STREET is set in 1900, and while there is a fair amount of innuendo, it stays within period notions of propriety. HFAC appreciated that the play was somewhat subversive, and a class critique, and they also appreciated that no one swore or had sex. Their production was delightful. It was much more Carol Burnett than Oscar Wilde, exploiting every opportunity for physical comedy. And their family audiences enjoyed it. I had never thought of the play that way before.

Q: What are you currently working on?

As mentioned above, I'm working on MAMA´S BOY. The New Group did a reading of the play as part of their "Cultural Contexts" evenings last December. Jayne Houdyshell played Marguerite to perfection. We will be doing another reading at The New Group sometime this fall. I just completed a play that's a "mash-up" of Noel Coward and Agatha Christie. It's called DEATH BY DESIGN. It was commissioned by HFAC, and it opens in Houston in September. Noel Coward and Agatha Christie, while stylistically worlds apart, surprisingly had a lot in common. They were contemporaries, and their early work elegantly evokes English life in the period between the wars. And while she is plot driven, and he boastfully eschews plot, they often wrote about the same character types, sometimes using identical locations. It seemed like such an obvious idea I was surprised that no one had thought of it before (at least I don't think anyone has!) A few years ago, I wrote a new libretto for an obscure Cole Porter musical called NYMPH ERRANT. This adaptation was produced at Theatreworks in Colorado. The Cole Porter Trust recently gave Prospect Theatre permission to produce the show. It opens in New York in July 2012, directed by Davis McCallum, who directed the NYC premiere of WEST MOON STREET. It´s very naughty, and needless to say, has an amazing score. I've just started working on a play loosely based on a crime that happened in Hollywood, Florida in the early nineties. I'm updating it, and setting it on Staten Island, now. It's tentatively called JOEY. I'm also adapting an obscure Jane Austen novella, "Lady Susan." This will be my first play that doesn't involve murder!