ArtSake

Alexandria Marzana-Lesnevich is writing her first book, a personal narrative about a Louisiana death penalty case, and she recently received some conspicuous encouragement. She won a 2010 Rona Jaffe Award, a $25,000 grant given to emerging female writers.

Alexandria lives in Jamaica Plain, and it turns out the prestigious award she’s just won has a nice, ongoing relationship with Massachusetts literature. Past local awardees include Sarah Braunstein (2007), Carin Clevidence (2004), and Ploughshares editor-in-chief Ladette Randolph (2002). And when Alexandria is formally honored for her achievement tonight at the NYU Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, the evening’s guest will be Jane Brox, a past MCC Artist Fellow.

Alexandria, who will read at the popular Four Stories series in Cambridge on October 18, was kind enough to check in for an ArtSake nano-interview (presumably using a computer newer than a Commodore 64 – see answer 3).

What’s the best/worst day job you’ve ever had?
Best and worst are actually the same: I was a balloon girl at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. The job involved the holding of thirty large, animal-shaped mylar balloons. I loved the serenity of it: strolling the zoo’s winding paths, watching the animals, watching people smile at the sight of so many balloons. One summer afternoon, a preschool summer camp walked by me, each kid holding hands with a buddy. One of the counselors said, “There’s the balloon girl! Let’s get her!” The kids dropped hands and piled on me. I lost every single balloon. I radioed headquarters and told them I’d been mugged by midgets.

Were President Obama to create a cabinet post in the arts, whom should he appoint as Secretary?
I think we’ve all agreed that Marilynne Robinson should basically win everything.

Computer, longhand, or typewriter?
Computer. I wrote a novel on a Commodore 64 as a kid, and the combination of screen and keys feels the closest to a conduit for thought. Having said that, I mourn the loss of the typewriter’s aesthetics. For example, who gets a tattoo of a computer keyboard?

Do you secretly dream of being a) a pop icon, b) an algebra teacher, and/or c) a crime-solver/writer a la Jessica Fletcher?
I spend enough time reading court transcripts that it ought to be (c). But it’s (a), as any regular at my local karaoke bar (the Midway) can tell you. Specifically, I would really, really like to be Springsteen.

Share a surprise twist in the Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich story.
I feel like the surprise twists keep coming, most recently with this award! But let’s go with my mother’s response when I informed her that her daughter planned to take a perfectly good, freshly minted Harvard JD and use it to become an unemployed writer: “Thank God, I never thought you’d be happy as a lawyer.” I’ll always be grateful she said that. (Though I do sometimes wish she’d spoken up before I racked up three years of law loans!) I should add that my mother’s a lawyer, as is my father, one sister, and one brother-in-law. They know from whence they speak.

How many revisions does your work typically go through?
I’m a tinkerer, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse but almost always for annoying, I imagine. Between the time Kim Stafford chose my essay “In the Fade” for the Annie Dillard Award at Bellingham Review and the time Bellingham actually published it, I think I sent them four new drafts – and they obviously liked the first submission well enough! I’m always happy when I see an author’s note in a collection that stories previously appeared somewhere “in different form.” My brethren!

Alexandria reads as part of the Four Stories Reading Series at the Enormous Room in Central Square, Cambridge, on Monday, October 18, 7 PM, with music starting at 6 PM.

Alexandria Marzana-Lesnevich received her JD from Harvard Law School in 2005 and her MFA from Emerson College in 2009. Her prose, both fiction and nonfiction, appears or is forthcoming in Bellingham Review, Fourth Genre, and Southeast Review, among other publications. She has received the Annie Dillard Award in Creative Nonfiction, the Ragdale Foundation’s Alice Hayes Fellowship for social justice writing, and a Millay Colony residency fellowship. Currently, Alexandria lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, and teaches creative writing at Boston’s Grub Street.

Image: Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, photo by Caleb Cole.

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Today’s glimpse from our gallery of past MCC fellows/finalists is from Lisa Olivieri‘s (Film & Video Finalist ’09) stirring documentary Helen Keller Had It Easy, about a woman living creatively despite losing her sight and hearing.

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Salem Theatre Company is about to launch an intriguing season of theatre on the North Shore: five plays, all by living, working female playwrights. We asked storyteller and playwright Judith Black, whose play Bittersweet Midnight is about to premiere in Salem, and STC Artistic Director John Fogle, to delve into the details of their work as theatre artists. Here, they elaborate on storytelling and history, the arts as a tool for humankind, and contemporary voices in theatre.

ArtSake: Judith, can you tell us about Bittersweet Midnight – what are the origins of the play? And can you talk about the decision to connect the story of Wilmot Redd, a victim of the Salem witch hysteria, with contemporary tales of women?

Judith Black: I do a lot of work with teenagers in my town through a volunteer program, Bridging Lives. It’s a big brother/big sister program that Dr. Jack Welter and I started ten years ago. When you see how profoundly affected a life can be by one human being to the ill or the well, you know that little has changed in this world. In Old Towne, the piece about Mammy Redd, it is an opportunity to explore how two lives, that of a “grouty” old woman and a young orphan girl, are impacted by one another and the immediate world in which they dwell. Teenagers can have their lives destroyed by cyber bullying. One cruel word or misunderstood picture is suddenly the providence of their entire world. In 1692 all one person had to do was call out “witch,” and a woman’s world was destroyed. I hope that in exploring the ancient we will have a clearer vision of the present. Also, when one’s world is locked into a theology where you are born in sin, work a plot of land all your life, then die and go to Hell, one wonders where redemption might be. This piece attempts an answer.

The second act is simply raucous fun and terror as I explore women’s compulsive relationships with food, sex and their mothers. This is a sacred trilogy!

ArtSake: What does it mean to premiere this work, so steeped in local history, in Salem?

Judith: It means that the authentically historic parts had better be correct! I did most of the research at the Essex Institute, but have run the story for folks at the Marblehead Historical Society and for the history diva of Marblehead, Bette Hunt. Bette was brilliantly helpful. Who knew that Brown’s island was known as Charles Island in 1689? Bette Hunt does!

ArtSake: How does your background as a storyteller inform the way you created this play?

Judith: When you are working with a piece of history the facts are given, but never the human motivations. It is those that enable humans to identify with another time and place. As a storyteller it is my job to discover and make those motivations available to listeners so they are on a journey of the heart.

The tales about women’s passions emerge right out of my life. After a 4 day retreat at Kripala for women with eating disorders that was charmingly called “What am i hungry for” the one issue that was never addressed would not go away. That was the relationship, or lack of it, between the svelts and zaftigs, or in common parlance, the fats and the skinnies or the bulimics/anorexics and compulsive over eaters. Exploring that was the root for the story Hungry. The Window Washers is the middle aged woman’s version of her husband going to the cheerleader car wash. The final story, about disappointed mothers and disappointing daughters, is simply the stuff that our lives are made of, and you will laugh till you weep.

ArtSake: John, the current Salem Theatre Company season has a heavy emphasis on contemporary plays by current working playwrights. What draws you to new and contemporary work?

John Fogle: This answer may ramble a bit… and this is perhaps a bit bookish… but I see all arts as humankind’s unique problem-solving tool. The well-made play – be it a tragedy, comedy or something in between – usually presents a troublesome situation and shows us a resolution – happy, sad or bittersweet. Because we, as the audience, have no moral responsibility for what occurs onstage, we can absorb these “lessons in life” with our defenses down. The theatre – and the arts in general – is where we tackle the dangerous stuff. So, I look for plays that promise to fill this role. Plays which relate.

And these are the type of plays I like to work on, to spend my time with.

I made a list of all the female playwrights I could think of, wanting the gather some of the strongest, best-known artists out there. Because audiences tend to respond to plays or playwrights they have some familiarity with, I zeroed in on the award-winning playwrights and on plays with a reputation for success.

(An aside: in my salad days, I worked for the Orson Welles Cinema Complex in Cambridge – first as cinema manager, then as Adv/Promotion Manager. We were in the cinema art & revival business – old movies – and we often quipped that you could get folks to see the new movie or the old play but not the old movie or the new [read unknown] play. True still, I think.)

Then I had to be concerned with finding plays which would work well in our small, rather basic theatre space. Also, I tried to consider “balance.” A mix of pure drama (Wit by Margaret Edson) and comedy (The Long Christmas Ride Home by Paula Vogel), realistic (Painting Churches by Tina Howe) and impressionistic, cutting-edge (Dead Man’s Cellphone by Sarah Ruhl) and more traditional narrative styles. Plus something from an established but local playwright/performer… which is what my long-time friend Judith Black brings to the party.

Finally, the plays had to “speak to me” (cliche!) about something that mattered.

ArtSake: I’m interested in the variety of STC’s programming, too, with a music calendar as well as cross-over events with artists from numerous disciplines – flash fiction writers, improv performers, even an “original theatrical bellydance.” What does this blend of styles and disciplines add to your identity as a theatre troupe?

John: Variety is the spice of life and we want to appeal to the broadest possible audience in our community. Our theatre space is an excellent small venue for music, stand-up, readers’ theatre, and the like – so we are eager to provide entertainments to these market segments and to introduce as many people as possible to our space. Getting “on the map” in the local consciousness is a long process. We hope that our diversity of offerings will advance that process.

Bittersweet Midnight by Judith Black, directed by John Fogle, will be performed at the Salem Theatre Company September 30-October 16, 2010.

John Fogle is a director, designer, and actor, and is Artistic Director of the Salem Theatre Company.

Judith Black is an nationally recognized professional storyteller.

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