An interview with Joe Waechter

PlayLabs 2015 continues with a reading of The Hidden People by Joe Waechter on Wednesday, October 14 at 7 p.m. The second reading of The Hidden People is Saturday, October 17 at 7 p.m. Reserve your seats here. We talked with Joe about the play and how he knew he wanted to be a playwright.

Tell us about The Hidden People.

The first time I visited Iceland I paid $25 for a map drawn by a psychic. The self-guided tour meandered between rocks and hills decorated with ribbons and shrines, markers for the homes of Iceland’s infamous Huldufólk, or hidden people. Even today, many Icelanders still believe in these mischievous elves. When Christian missionaries arrived in Iceland, the Bible was initially rejected. Icelanders preferred their Pagan and Norse mash-up of sweaty trolls and magical waterfalls to the stories of Jesus and Eden. That resistance forced missionaries to rewrite and adapt the Bible, and find loopholes for the insertion of Icelandic beliefs. The Hidden People is a three-part epic exploring this absurd and astonishing creation story—or at least my version of it.

When did you know you wanted to be a playwright?

As a kid, I would often hijack the home video camera to make movies, including a travel video about the former planet Pluto that featured a blue flannel sheet, a suburban thriller about a singing bush, and a horror film about a grumpy mother. As a kid I wrote poetry and short stories, but didn’t write my first play until high school. It was on a dare from my drama teacher. Gravy Boats told the story of two middle-aged, single women trying to win first prize in a Tupperware-selling contest, an all-expense paid vacation to Rome. Not the one in Italy, but the small town in Georgia. It featured civil war reenactments, cross-dressing, and a very serious moment about plumbing. It won a playwriting contest and got performed in a professional theatre. Watching words that I wrote come to life and audiences coming together to experience a story I created was such an incredible experience. I was hooked.

What kind of stories have you been interested in writing recently?

Right now, I am working on a new play. I am hesitant to talk about concretely, but I will say that I am thinking a lot about the relationship between sexuality and religion and how the present is an archive of the past. I am thinking a lot about farming, antiquated technologies, the desire to find loopholes, and the impulse to start a utopia. I’m thinking about knick-knacks and totems, animals, how-to manuals, the absurdity and beauty of ritual, what it means to be faithful, and the heartbreaking but well-meaning intent behind tolerance.

What’s something about playwriting that you had to learn the hard way?

Never forget to number your pages. It’s entertaining to watch the actors read page 76 after page 23, but it’s also excruciating.

Finish this sentence: If I weren’t a playwright I would be…

A chef. Or an interior decorator.

 

About The Hidden People:
Life isn’t easy for the world’s first family and their 47 children. When eldest twins Fred and Frieda run away in search of “a more super awesome life,” all hell breaks loose. In this dark, hysterical, and magical saga, Waechter mashes-up creation myths to forge a new story about family, the origin of the world, and the darkness that lurks within us all.

About Joe Waechter:
Joe Waechter’s plays include Good Ol’ Boys, PROFILES, Lake Untersee, and The Hidden People, as well as the “headphone operas” The Hoot Owl and Howard Gap Road. His work has been seen at Playwrights Horizons, Guthrie Theater, Ars Nova, American Repertory Theater, McCarter Theatre, Trinity Rep, The Kennedy Center, PlayPenn, Workhaus Collective, Red Eye Theater, and the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, among others. Some of his awards include the AracaWorks Graduate Playwriting Prize, a Lucille Lortel Playwriting Fellowship, and the McKnight Fellowship and two Jerome Fellowships at the Playwrights’ Center, where he is currently a Core Writer. Joe has been a resident writer at the Hangar Theatre, Tofte Lake Center, SPACE on Ryder Farm, and, in summer 2014, developed a new play aboard an ice-class sailing vessel in the Arctic Circle. He received his M.F.A. in Playwriting from Brown University, and is currently under commission by Berkeley Repertory Theatre to write a play about fantasy, masculinity, and hockey in Minnesota. www.joewaechter.com

 

Joe Waechter