A fawn is a defensive reflex, a posture of affection that can only be taken in the imbalance of power. It’s also a word for an unweaned deer, the first victim in Sophie McIntosh’s tough little miracle of a play Road Kills. Owen runs the family business disposing of animal carcasses on county highways and Jaki assists him as court-mandated community service. The first step in her redemption requires Owen to put his life in Jaki’s hands, watching the road while he scrapes frozen fur off the asphalt. With McIntosh’s signature deadpan incongruity, a frightening valentine to Midwest isolation unfolds: glittering, jagged, and written in blood.
Gracie Gardner: Hey Sophie! You first told me about this play a year ago and I was so excited to read it. Now that I have… This is a major piece of writing. It’s huge and risky and sad and powerful. It feels like reading a classic for the first time. How did it feel writing it? Did you feel like you had really tapped into something?
Sophie McIntosh: Wow, thank you—seriously, thank you for saying that. I was definitely aware of the risk first and foremost, because the play takes some big swings and tackles some heavy, complicated themes, especially around the nuances of abuse. I began writing this play many years ago, and it took a few false starts before I really got underway. But once I figured out who these people were, and settled into a flow, I was just clipping along and it all sort of fell into place. When it was done, I sensed that I had something exciting on my hands—and also something that scared me.
GG: How does this play fit into the story of your playwriting journey thus far? Was there anything you set out to do with this play that was different from previous plays?
SM: I started noodling on Road Kills in 2019, when I was still an undergrad living in Wisconsin. I have very distinct memories of listening to “Moonshadow” and “Bitterblue” while walking across campus back in Stevens Point, and driving past deer carcasses on the side of I-39 on my way to donate plasma for a few bucks as a student. It very immediately felt different from the other scripts I had completed at that time—it was much less black and white in its judgment of characters. As a very young playwright, I hadn’t yet outgrown the fear that audiences would interpret the moral stances of my characters as my own personal values, and a lot of my early work took great pains to clearly delineate who was in the right and who was in the wrong. This play really didn’t, and doesn’t, do that.
GG: I know you’re vegan, (tell me to fuck right off if this is too personal) can you talk a little about how you came to be vegan and if that has an impact on the germination of this play?
SM: Haha, happy to talk about veganism! Just want to disclaim to any future readers that I’m not out here to evangelize—I think it’s a really personal philosophical stance. But anyway… I became vegan in large part because I grew up watching the shifting landscape of the dairy industry as smaller family farms were absorbed and destroyed by factory farms that turned the care of their animals involved into an industrialized, unfeeling process. This expanded into an interest in how we allow empathy for certain animals (pets and “cute” critters) and deny it to others (livestock, pests, vehicle victims, etc.)—and the way these categorizations reflect our own values, both as individuals and as a society. Road Kills grapples with these same questions.
GG: What is the function of art for you as a playwright?
SM: First and foremost, to build bridges of empathy—to bring us into the perspective of other people, maybe even people we would hate or judge ruthlessly if we encountered them in daily life, and give us the opportunity to see the world through their eyes, and maybe even understand why they make the decisions that they do. Also, I think that engaging with art sort of emotionally elevates us. I am not a religious person, but certain kinds of art can bring me to a state of sublime rapture unlike anything I’ve experienced.
GG: What was the process of researching this play like?
SM: Fun and chaotic! I spent a lot of time driving the Wisconsin highways and accumulating some very specific visuals that helped me build the world of the play. I also spent many hours on ye olde Google, and I really struck gold when I stumbled across an article about a community service roadkill pickup program in Michigan. No such program has ever actually existed in Wisconsin, so I took some creative liberty in transposing the setting onto my home state. Finally, one of our actors in this production (the incomparable D.B. Milliken) managed, through a combination of online sleuthing and incredible dedication, to get us a phone interview with the wife of a Wisconsin-based roadkill collector. That was easily one of the more memorable conversations I’ve had in my entire life, and she provided some excellent (and juicy) details.
GG: You have your own theater company. Did you envision this play with your theater in mind? What impact does having your own production company have on your creative process?
SM: Road Kills predates Good Apples by a number of years, so this particular play was not written specifically for Good Apples Collective. However—especially, as I noted above, because this one does feel so raw and risky!—there is nowhere else I’d rather be premiering Road Kills now that its time has come. Nina Goodheart, the other co-founder of GAC, is directing the play. I trust her so implicitly with this material. Knowing that I have the support of artists who I trust and access to production/development opportunities through GAC has radically transformed how I approach new projects—I’m more open and collaborative from the get-go, and bring team members in earlier in the process to mold it to our collective’s strengths and sensibilities.
GG: You’ve been working on this play for a few years. How did describing this play to people go? Were there any reactions that impacted the writing of it?
SM: On its surface, the play is actually really pitch-able—as soon as people hear “roadkill collector” and they’re usually like, “oh, cool!” or “oh, gross…” Then, when they read the blurb and see the word “abuse” in there, they immediately assume that it’s a stone-cold tragedy. But it was actually important to me that the play feel nuanced in tone, and have room for levity and humor. Road Kills is a play about two people who have both caused and suffered harm, and their lives are sometimes difficult, sometimes heartbreaking, and, yes, sometimes hilarious! And I think that laughter really opens an audience up, and allows them to become more invested in the people onstage—which makes for a greater payoff when these characters do encounter real hardship. But going back to your original point about reactions… This was actually the first play I ever submitted to a theater. This was back in Wisconsin, and the literary manager actually really loved the play and fought for it… but the artistic director immediately rejected it and said it was one of the most depraved things she’d ever read. That bit of feedback certainly left an impression, but I resisted the urge to soften the play in response.
GG: There’s a great interview with Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich where Audre says: “Poetry is not Play-Doh. You can’t take a poem and keep re-forming it. It is itself, and you have to know how to cut it.” This play has that quality. What was the editing process like for you? Were there any rewrites?
SM: Damn, that’s a fantastic analogy. That idea of excavation feels particularly apt with this play, because I wrote the first draft so long ago that I sort of had to chisel out its new shape from the outside in. Six-ish years isn’t even that long by new play development standards, but it was a period of such intense change for me—moving from Wisconsin, settling in NYC, having my first production, beginning and completing grad school—that I couldn’t help but evolve as a writer. Still, I never wanted to go back and do a page-one rewrite on Road Kills because I felt that the first draft held a sort of purity of impulse that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to recreate now that I’m so removed from its point of origin. Don’t get me wrong—I did plenty of tweaking and rewriting– but the core of the play has always remained.Nina has been really helpful in helping me preserve its original intention when I begin to doubt my younger self.
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