At the PWC this week: Philip Dawkins

Core Writer Philip Dawkins is at the Playwrights’ Center this week, workshopping his new solo show The Happiest Place on Earth with director Jonathan L. Green. Philip will premiere this show in September, with Jonathan directing, as part of Greenhouse Theater Center’s Solo Celebration! series, a co-production with Sideshow Theatre Company. Learn a bit about Philip in this mini-interview.

Where do your ideas come from?

If I knew where my ideas came from, I would spend all of my time in that place. As it is, I have no idea where I…idea. Sometimes it’s a visual thing, or a question I’ve been rolling around in my head for a while. Sometimes I’ll be at a museum staring at a painting and wonder, what are those cherubs doing floating around that virgin holding a goat head, and then I’ll get an idea for a romantic comedy. Once I had a dream that turned into The Homosexuals. (Once I had a homosexual who turned into a dream. Awwwwww. [eeeww]). But, I don’t think I have a consistent source of ideas. I tend to be genuinely surprised each time I have one.

What’s something about you that may surprise people?

I have a novice black belt in shaolin kung fu. And I love to knit. Depending on your relationship with me, either, neither or both of those will surprise you.

When did you know you wanted to write for the theater?

When I was about six and my parents were watching an episode of Moonlighting. Cybill Shepherd’s character told Bruce Willis’s character not to say what he just said or else he’d get the writers in trouble. My parents laughed and I asked them to explain why that was funny. I then learned that what we were watching wasn’t reality, and that somewhere in California, people were writing the words that these characters were saying…the characters just acknowledged that. Though I didn’t yet know about writing for the stage, that started something in me. My six year old brain got all full of meta-funny, and I decided I wanted to be one of the people who told Cybill Shepherd what to say. Cybill, if you’re out there, call me.

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

Overemployment is a must in order to make minimum wage. This is sick and wrong and unfortunately true in our country.

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

…available for lunch.

What do you do when you’re stuck on something you’re writing?

Go on a bike ride. Or write on one of my other projects. Or just throw in an alien invasion. I had a moment once when I couldn’t figure out how one character could be in two places at once—and I really needed her to be. It was late at night and I was frustrated, and in my head I thought, “I’ve GOT it! She has a CLONE.” The minute I wrote the words, “Christina’s Clone walks into the bar,” on my script, I realized I needed to hit delete, close the computer and go to bed.