A Kind Of Play, From Afar

Site specific theatre is very hard to do. Beyond the logistical realities of transforming a non-theaterical space into a venue for performance, it is artistically hard to justify. Why should one place a piece of live performance in a space other than a theater? The difficulty and tensions of site specific work is a topic we’ve discussed on Culturebot before. This past fall two playwrights, Hansol Jung– known for her plays Wolf Play (Soho Rep, 2022) and Merry Me (New York Theatre Workshop, 2023) and Jeana Scotti–who at the time of this interview’s publication has been announced as a member of The Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group– each had a site-specific production on. Jung’s Last Call, which took place in a smattering of Brooklyn brownstones, and Scotti’s Oh, Honey, which played every night at Little Egg, a restaurant on Washington Avenue– attendance included a cup of soup. This past September, while in the throes of both of their runs, the two playwrights sat down to discuss their plays and the intensive process of adapting these works to new spaces, getting into the gritty details of considerations as small as the warmth of a lightbulb. The conversation illuminates something fundamental to theater, just how deeply embroiled in the details one must be in order to build a whole world. 

This conversation has been edited for both length and clarity. 

-Eve Bromberg, Editor 

Jeana Scotti: I’m so glad to do this, and I’m very glad to meet you. I’ve heard so many exciting things about your show.

Hansol Jung: This is interesting because you haven’t seen mine and I haven’t seen yours, and here we are.

JS: I know! I was thinking that I’ve read Wolf Play, and I love Wolf Play. It looks like a lot of your show is sold out, which is amazing.

HJ: Yes, we have one week left. Your play, Oh, Honey sounds so interesting. When I first saw the description of it– people witnessing women talking about food– I thought it would be like Sex and The City. And then I looked into a bit more and realized how potentially devastating it could be. Can you talk a bit about it? What is your play about?

JS: I read Chanel Miller’s book, Know My Name where she discusses this group of mothers who would meet up and discuss the accusations of sexual assault against their sons. There was a piece about this group in The New York Times in 2017. That was the inspiration. I was really interested in the psychology of these women. And I think unfortunately a lot of people have experience knowing someone who’s been accused of assault. There’s an experience of shock of thinking you know someone and then going through the experience of what it means to know someone with this kind of accusation, especially for a mother.  When I read the article it felt to me like a lot of the women were repressing a lot. 

HJ: I read it. It was infuriating actually.

JS: Yeah. It’s like, what is forced ignorance? I was really interested.

HJ: It sounds like, as you talk about it now, and having written a whole play about them, it seems like you have access to a point of empathy that I suppose I didn’t on first reading of the article.

JS: I don’t want to give a false impression. I think there’s a bit of like, trying to think about what does it feel like to have, maybe, you know… I don’t know, have to deal with thinking of your child in the worst ways. And, what is the guilt or the implications of that? But I think a lot of them, the mothers, aren’t really taking any of that on. It’s a defense mechanism. So yes, there’s me trying to understand their headspace, but also I’m critical– wanting to defend those that we love so much while irreparably hurting other people. The defense of their sons is at the cost of someone else’s life.

HJ: I may have jumped the gun with that. I don’t mean to label.

JS: You didn’t jump at all. It’s tricky– it was a tricky thing for me to navigate. I’m trying to represent an empathy, like complete empathy towards everyone in the play.

HJ: You have to, if you’re building people, fictional as they may be, you have to get behind their eyeballs. But tell me about how this play came to be? How did you go from reading the article to building a play?

JS: Clubbed Thumb has an early-career-writers group. This was a few years ago, in 2022. In writing the play, it took me many drafts to figure out what was actually happening with these women. I feel like this is one of the hardest plays for me to write because it’s very different from my life. I chose to stage this play in a restaurant because I have worked in the service industry for so long. There’s a lot of diner-slash-guest relationships with those service industry workers. So that helped me find my own perspective through the narrative. I work at the restaurant where the play is produced, The Little Egg in Prospect Heights.

HJ: Oh my God!

JS: Yeah. Evan, the owner and Nora, the manager are really lovely people that are also involved in the arts. It’s a very community-driven space. They asked if anyone had an interest in using the space for alternative purposes. I told them I wanted to put up a production! And I don’t know if they knew what that meant at the time. 

HJ: [laughs]

JS: We started asking if we could change the lights, and make other changes to the space. I didn’t write Oh, Honey as a site-specific play, but after working there for a while and observing the diners there, I started to see the space as a kind of play, from afar. It helped me to think of it as a stage already. I know where people would sit in there.

HJ: That’s so funny, cause we did my play also at a restaurant that my partner is a bartender at.

JS: Oh, wow!

HJ: It was a similar situation where the head chef at this restaurant in Mystic told us to come in and do whatever. We came in and started moving everything!

JS: Is this the same play, or is it a different one?

HJ: It’s the one that we’re doing right now, Last Call, but we did like a little pop-up as a workshop in a restaurant. But it’s funny how similar the experiences are. We went in there and changed everything.

JS: Yes, it was an experience of seeing the space in a very specific way that involves transforming it all. 

HJ: How did this work? Were you there all week? The entire run was at this establishment, right?

JS: Yeah, we did it last year and we’re doing it again this year. As you know, it has a lot of challenges of being like, we don’t really know what it is until we are in this space. I didn’t get to rehearse because, you know, with restaurants, there’s not a lot of time to rehearse in them. So I think that was a big challenge last year for all of us, and especially for our director, Carson [Joenk]. It was a big challenge of getting into the space and figuring out how everything actually works and how the space will work with people in it. And there’s so much less space when there’s people there! For your play, you’re in different spaces it seems like almost every night or every week?

HJ: Yeah, it’s psychotic. I don’t know what even propelled this idea. But yeah, we’re in different apartments every other day, so load-in/load-out, load-in/load-out almost every day. But yeah, it’s the challenges of adjusting to space and lighting.

JS: Oh, because you have to relight it.

HJ: Yeah, every time, relight it, restage it.

JS: Are you getting there earlier to rehearse in each space too?

HJ: We sort of budgeted in like a three-hour spacing rehearsal for everyone. It’s been very interesting. I think I knew it theoretically, and I’m sure you can attest to how the space changes the entire tenor of the evening. It sort of becomes its own character. There’s a story that it brings as well, of all the history that I suppose it carries with it. And then the weirdness of the people who come into the space. It’s weird to go into someone’s house that you don’t know and sit on their furniture. Or like going to a restaurant in Mystic and, you know, it’s like patrons of the restaurant or that we had people who worked at the restaurant, but they came into the space under a different contract of what they’re supposed to do there. And that was really fun, to watch people navigate that, and re-learn how to be in that space. I just wanted to go back to what you were saying earlier about how you said you hadn’t originally intended it to be site specific. But do you think you could go back to a theater right now with the script that you have or do you feel like the space or the specific nature of it has transformed it?

JS: I think it definitely could be in a theater as well, but I wonder if it would lose something in that transfer now for, well, maybe for me and the people working on it. Yeah, there’s a really interesting energetic exchange of having it in the restaurant. And like you said, people coming in with a different kind of purpose in this space. I think it’s been really wonderful to have different audiences come in too. So I think putting it in a theater would lose some of that as well. I also think we’d lose some potential audience members: regular patrons of the restaurant that maybe like aren’t going to see theatre regularly.

HJ: Oh, cool.

JS: Yeah. And I think for me with the play, there’s so much about being observed. I’m really interested in that, with people that are coming to see the play as audience, but also diners. And with that, they’re observing the play also but they are being served food and drink too. 

HJ: I don’t want spoilers, but is it set up where the play is happening at a table of the restaurant and everybody else is sort of also at their own table, but just watching?

JS: Yeah, so there’s some table seats and some regular seats that don’t have tables, and then there’s a bar that we’ll set up too. And they’re kind of just like invisible diner guests.

HJ: Oh, so like the actors don’t really interact with anyone?

JS: No, there’s no scripted interactions in the play. But if something needs to be adjusted, sometimes that happened last year where someone needed to clear something or like get by someone. Yeah. And in your piece, there is interaction, right?

HJ: Oh yes. The premise is that there’s a bartender that the patrons have hired to come make us drinks. And so they make drinks and, it’s sort of like a—it begins like a cocktail class that ends up becoming more. The bartender does some quizzes, and if you get them right, you get the drink. So it sort of starts like a cocktail-class-game thing that reveals itself to be more of a story of the fictional characters. It’s been very wild because the actors have like all these different scripts in their heads, because the script itself is maybe like 35-pages long, but it’s 80 to 90 minutes depending on how verbose the audience is. And there’s a flow chart of where the actors should go, depending on how the audience answers.

JS: Oh, wow. I bet that must be such a challenge for actors, but also incredible, like really exciting for them.

HJ: It seems challenging and sometimes exhilarating.

JS: You’ve written all these different scenarios and situations. You’ve really written many plays in one.

HJ: Yeah! It’s fun for me. It’s easy for me to be like, “if they say this, you say this. If they say this, you say this.” But to keep that all in your brain while also mixing drinks and twirling is a bit of a circus act. But it’s been really incredible to watch them do that. And really the best thing is watching the audience, and how they become a kind of a community. They talk to each other, even if they don’t come together. We’ve had like a lot of solo audience members who end up being friends with each other or like, I don’t know, it’s kind of cool to see that emerge.

JS: You were speaking earlier about the different apartments and the energy within each of them. Do you feel like some of them are more conducive to having the audience have conversations with each other in the way you’re talking about?

HJ: Yes. I can’t really pinpoint it, but there are warm spaces and there are cool spaces and that I think has an effect. I’ve also noticed higher ceilings make people more talkative. I don’t have enough data points to make an actual claim, but yes, that’s sort of been a kind of a pattern. And warmer lighting will make you more, I think, able to chat than cooler lighting.

JS: Have you done adjustments after seeing some of the performances to like including more warm lighting or things that can make people.

HJ: That we can’t control. Although we did replace some bulbs in some apartments! It’s more of an observation at this point. Maybe in a different run, perhaps next year? This is great information to be like, if we can control the lighting, let’s keep it warm.

JS: How did you find the people whose homes you’re in?

HJ: It was all En Garde Arts. We partnered with Anne Hamburger and En Garde Arts. It’s incredible. They do mostly site-specific work. And they just found all these apartments. I think it’s eight in total. We did our previews in one apartment in Brooklyn. So we were in this amazing man Vince Braun’s house for like five days and he saw the show five times. I think by the end of it he was like, “okay, bye, go, leave”.

JS: I want my house back!

HJ: Exactly. I’m fascinated that you built it as a theatre piece and then you flopped it into this site-specific state. What was the thing that was most surprising about having done that as opposed to being in a theater?

JS: I think it was surprising that it was… I mean, it’s not easy having it in the restaurant, but I think it works well because it’s just like, the play is mostly people sitting at this table talking. It actually became more interesting to have it not in the theater, where there’s so much space and distance from the audience, and having it be closer.

HJ: So like having people on top of each other was helpful?

JS: Yeah, I think so. Because it’s really intimate conversations that they’re having. So being able to be close to it, I think helps. I think that, a challenge as far as anything like entrances and exits, or like not writing with that in mind. There’s a lot of times they go outside, and enter from outside and, you know, I think that that has created its own challenges. Or for example, there were some moments in a bathroom that we can’t really see. So now you don’t see those moments. I think it’s okay. It works out.

HJ: You hear it.

JS: Yeah, Carson, the director, has made it so we still understand those moments that are happening. 

HJ: I think the big learning curve or challenge for me. I’ve never done site-specific work before and I didn’t know what I was doing. It’s the balance between what’s real, and how far can I push suspension of disbelief? It’s because everyone’s lit. We’re just sitting there, and it’s someone’s actual house and the drinks are real. So everything feels real, but the story is not. It’s fiction. It’s also set a little in the future. So the world is different from the world we live in. You need to get a buy-in from the audience or teach them or do the exposition. And the way you do exposition in an actual space is so different than if you were just doing the piece in a theater because they’re there to be expositional. Theater goers are primed to encounter a fictional story. But the way audiences come into a site-specific work is like, well, this is real. The site is real. The food is real. What’s not? And how do you convince them to allow that in their realm of reality?

JS: Yeah, and it makes sense what you’re saying earlier about setting. How do you set the tone with these different spaces? How do we establish that reality in different locations in our current time period while reaching into the future too?

HJ: I mean, especially since your story seems to deal with how we view what’s real, what’s not, and what’s fact, what’s not? And I don’t know if you felt any tension around that dynamic? How does it help or boost the story?

JS: That’s a really interesting question. There’s a bit of Real Housewives-esque moments where, if you’ve seen those reality shows, it’s like a heightened semi-scripted where people are like different versions of themselves. I’m really interested in that. When are we telling the truth? When are we presenting ourselves a bit differently for protection? I think within a space that is real, it puts these questions into a different context. How much can people hide when you’re eating real food and around actual people are in the room, close enough to touch you? You can maybe even feel their breath. 

HJ: Yeah, there’s like a weird pressure that I enjoy, that seems like the audience takes on as part of the show.

JS: I think for a bit of our show, too, we were talking about, do we have real food? Do we have the actors to eat on stage? Because I think in a staged version, you can get away with more of that suspended disbelief. They can mime eating? But when it’s in an actual space, we’re like, no, we need the real thing.

HJ: What is that about? Why does it have to be real? I agree with you, but it’s such a weird thing to decide what gets to be real and what gets to be prop.

JS: We became really focused on every prop because we were in this real space, a real restaurant. They’re really eating. I’d never thought about any of this before. With any other play I’ve worked on, I can rely on the suspension of disbelief.

HJ: Right. I remember when we did Wolf Play, we purposefully made everything not real. The milk was styrofoam. The cereal was Legos. And I think the point of it was, like, it’s not real. None of this is real. I need you to know it’s not real. But the trick is that your feelings are real. Theatre is always that weird balance of makebelieve and reality, because people are really there, watching. I started thinking about it with Wolf Play, but now more with Last Call, of the necessity of theater or the question of why a piece has to be theater? It has something to do with our navigation of reality, and what we believe, what we are willing to say is real together? How do we get to the consensus of those rules that are unspoken that you and I, as playwrights, get to control? I still feel a bit clumsy about it, because I don’t really know much about site-specific work, but that’s been my biggest takeaway, I think. Not that you asked what my biggest takeaway was. Now I’m just talking at you.

JS: No, no, no, that’s great. I haven’t done site-specific work outside of this play either.

HJ: And here we are! Here we are talking about it for a publication. 

JS: I guess that’s the way to do it. We were like, okay, like I have this space, like why not?