An interview with Jenny Connell Davis

The Playwrights’ Center’s 2015-16 Ruth Easton New Play Series kicks off December 7 and 8 with Scientific Method, a new play by Core Writer Jenny Connell Davis. Associate Artistic Director Hayley Finn talked to Jenny about how the play originated, how she builds complex characters, and what else is going on in her writing life.

What inspired you to write this play?

When I explain the origin of my plays, I find I usually start by saying, “Well, I got really mad…”

This was inspired by a lot of friends of mine, but one in particular. I have a friend who has dedicated years and years to getting a Ph.D., and she’s one of the brightest minds I know. If anybody is going to cure cancer, it’s this woman. But part of the reason that it’s taken so long is that she kept running into one obstacle after another. A cumulative effect of lots of little things that were going wrong—not getting on to a particular project, or getting side tracked. She thought it was par for the course. Then at some point one of her advisors pulled her aside and said, “You’re a poster child for sexism in the sciences.” And I think it hit her like a lightning bolt. She looked back at what her experience had been with some of the men in her field who were meant to be mentors, and some of the women, who were really failing her on several fronts. I saw her losing a lot of time to bullshit that wasn’t about her, and wasn’t about the work.

That’s where it started. And then it’s been an interesting parallel, obviously: the question of women writers, women playwrights, and the pipeline for good work. As I’ve been working on the play, I’ve thought more about that. What is it to advocate for each other? What is it to advocate for yourself? What is the environment in which we want creativity—whether it’s artistic or scientific— to happen? And what does it take for somebody to do their best work?

What research did you do for the play?

I did an enormous amount of research, and I started paying a lot more attention to the science around me. My husband and several of my friends are in the sciences, so I’ve always been around it. When it came to specific science in the play, wanting to look at cancer and certain cells, I was quizzing all of the scientists in my life and then going and finding scientists whose work was similar to my characters’. I took pieces of different scientists’ work and put them into the fictional lab.

I know Rosalind Franklin influenced this work. What do you think has changed since her time? 

I think the story of Rosalind Franklin haunts science, and haunts women scientists. There’s been tremendous progress; you see a lot of women who are primary investigators at the head of labs, and there are a ton more women in science, which is terrific. But there are still barriers. Both the really bold-faced kind of bias that Franklin ran into, and especially and importantly the subtle stuff. The stuff that you blink and you miss it and you think “maybe I’m crazy.” It’s not everybody, I know. I think most scientists and most male scientists are extremely well meaning. And a lot of them are really aware of the issues and are terrific mentors to men and women. So while I’m grappling with issues of bias and inequity in this play, I don’t want to paint everybody with the same brush.

How is this play similar to or different from your other plays?

It has the complicated, nobody’s right/nobody’s fully wrong, everybody’s screwed up a little perspective that tends to show up in my work. I’m not interested in having villains and heroes. Goddess of Mercy was the world of big business; this is definitely the world of science. But they’re still really about the people and the ways in which people are wrestling through their world and their sometimes poor choices.

Your play centers on an important issue in the field around gender equality, but one of the aspects of your play that makes it so compelling is that the characters are complex and well-crafted. What was your process for generating these characters? 

They all riff off of people I know and love—although I don’t know if those people would necessarily recognize themselves.

With Amy, I wanted to create a scientist who you could connect with, but who was still sort of cranky from spending too much time in the lab. But somebody with a sense of humor. A lot of times scientist characters are either so eccentric or so dry. I wanted her to be as four-dimensional as I could make her. We sympathize with her; we’re right there with her frustrations. 

Manish is inspired by a friend of mine from college, who happened to be South Asian, and who was a brilliant, hilarious badass. The first time we did a reading of the play, the guy who played him was like, “Man, I never get to play the cool guy,” and I was like, “You should get to be the cool guy.” I wanted Manish to be somebody who’d gone to a fancy school and was smart and was also funny and sexy. I also wanted to get away from some of the stereotypes I sometimes see, the assumptions we might make about who will or won’t be an ally. 

Makayla is a smart student who feels like she’s a fish out of water at the prestigious university where the play takes place. She’s inspired by several of the students I taught when I was working at a (terrific) Brooklyn private school. She’s also named after my young niece, who is Puerto Rican and who, I hope, will someday bust through the barriers that I’ve seen her already have to face. I wanted to kind of slip a love note in there to her. 

Marie…I think we’ve all run into some folks who, having “made it the hard way,” don’t necessarily see that they can help create a different way forward, who don’t necessarily see that as an important part of their legacy. And those people…they’re inspiring, but sometimes they’re as much “cautionary tale” as they are role model.

And Julian, so far I’ve just been trying to have fun with him. He’s not quite “Doctor Evil,” but he’s definitely a certain type of hotshot who navigates the system like a ninja for his own benefit, without, necessarily, a lot of thought to the larger consequences. 

Like I said, I sometimes start writing based on what gets my dander up.

What are you hoping to get out of the upcoming workshop at the Playwrights’ Center?

I’m hoping that some smart people can help me break the play open. I’m really hoping to leave with a completely different draft than I come with. I’m looking hard at the second act. And I want to look at the science. It’s funny, I did all this research to put the science in a little while ago, and then as I’ve been going back to review the draft that I’ve put away for a while, I’m like, “huh?” I need to make sure that the science invites people into the play, or at least doesn’t make them feel uninvited. So, yeah, to make sure the science is there and it’s real but is not going to be enough to make people feel like they need to go take a biology class before they can enjoy the play and understand it.

What are some other things you’re working on now, besides this play?

I’m still working on Goddess of Mercy. I got a chance to work on it a lot this summer, thanks largely to the Playwrights’ Center and their advocacy for it. 

I’m working on a television project, which is still all speculative. I’m also in the early stages of a play that is set in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. I lived in a building there that was amazing, with the cross-section of people who were my neighbors. It was kind of a hot time to be there, a high water mark in the gentrification in that neighborhood. It was also when there were some particularly, spectacularly violent things that happened. There was a woman who was burned to death in her own elevator. And a grocery store on the corner that was burned down. And an apartment that burned down. So I’ve been thinking about whether I want the play to be about fire. And I’ve been thinking about my neighbors, who I got to know pretty well, and whose story I feel that I have to tell. This is probably the biggest, messiest play I’ve ever tried to write.

Sounds like an exciting time for you and your writing.

It’s been a busy four or five months. By far the busiest that I’ve ever had. And it’s been really gratifying; I’ve had wonderful mentors and collaborators along the way. For the last two years it’s felt a little bit like I’m building a pile of sticks in a vacuum and trying to light a fire. And in the last six months somebody was like, “Would you like some oxygen for that?” And then I’ve been able to make some headway on some projects that I really really care about, and start to build relationships that I’m excited about and I hope are long term. So much of that is due to the advocacy of the Playwrights’ Center. It’s a pretty good place to be.

 

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