Interview with Playwright BARRY LEVEY
Posted by MB - October 13, 2015
Barry Levey
Playwright, Barry Levey recently sat down with Project Y Associate Producer, Sarah Dunivant, to talk about his upcoming production of Maimed, which is the centerpiece of our 3rd New York New Playwright Festival (NYNP). A second year member of Project Y Playwrights Group, Levey has been part of TechnoPlays Festival and wrote and performed the NYFringe hit, Hoaxacaust, in 2014. We are excited to see the workshop production this October.
SD: What inspired “Maimed”?
BL: I’d wanted to write it for a very long time, and one day just got brave enough to start. Also my therapist vetoed my other ideas.
SD: How is this play similar or different to some of your other plays?
BL: I enjoy writing about my own experience through someone else’s lens—in this case, filtering aspects of my family history through the prism of Patrick Dennis’s Auntie Mame. It’s a way of forcing myself out of my own perspective, even when coming from a personal place. Plus, I get to feed my inner nerd; I’ve never met an idea I couldn’t research to death.
SD: What was the process like for creating the piece?
BL: The writing process was one of my fastest—helped along by deadlines from the Project Y writers’ group. It’s had two readings with actors, by the Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey and The New Group. Both were awesome.
SD: What do you hope to gain from the workshop production in the NY New Playwright Festival?
BL: A film deal. Or just to share it with Project Y’s audience and make people laugh.
SD: When did you decide you wanted to pursue playwriting?
BL: When puberty dictated I would no longer pursue musical theater performance. I still try to sneak a little musical theater quality into each of my plays. Just kidding; I’m not remotely sneaky about it.
SD: Do you have any playwriting commandments or rules that you follow? If so, what are they? How do they instruct your writing?
BL: I like Jose Rivera’s dictum regarding writer’s block: go back to where you lied, and tell the truth. I’m paraphrasing, of course. And it doesn’t always work. But it’s a good way to psychoanalyze yourself for an hour instead of writing.
SD: What are you working on now?
BL: The story of a woman trying to juggle career and romance—in the 1780s. She encounters some conflict. But she’s based on a real-life genius I find inspirational, and she left behind enough witty-but-unknown public-domain putdowns that I barely need to write my own jokes.