Stage Whisper
Whisper in the Wings Episode 646
(upbeat music) - Hello everyone and welcome back into a fantastic new whisper in the wings from stage whisper. I am so excited about the show we have today. It is the perfect fall show. It is amazing. It's got so much critical acclaim for it. And now here it is in New York being produced. Joining us today to talk about this work, we've got the playwright, Riley Elton McCarthy, who's joining us to talk about their new work being presented by Basement Light Productions and Culture Lab LIC entitled "I'm Going to Eat You Alive". It's playing October 3rd through the 27th at Culture Lab LIC. And you can get your tickets and more information by visiting culturallablic.org. This is a fabulous venue as we've covered before with what will the neighbors say in their production third law. And I'm excited to see how this show on our program today gets put up there. I'm even more excited to dive more into it and share it with you. So let us not waste any more time. Let us welcome on our guests, Riley. Welcome into whisper in the wings from stage whisper. - Thank you for having me, Andrew. I'm so excited to talk with you today. - I am thrilled that you were here and I'm thrilled about this piece that's seen so much success so far. And now here we go, putting it up at Culture Lab LIC. Let us start by having you tell us a little bit about what I'm going to eat you alive is about. - Yeah, well, I'm going to eat you alive is a theatrical road trip. We're following geologist thesis student Roach on his trip across America, documenting the natural mineral compositions of America's greatest national landmarks. He's essentially going to all of the great parks in Mount Rushmore and collecting mineral samples. Except there's a little problem. Roach has pica and he's actually collecting the rock samples to eat them. This unfortunately coincides with the release of his ex from prison on parole. And it's the 10th anniversary of the death of his mother. His ex was released from prison after serving for this murder. And that's as much as I can say before it gets into spoiler territory. - Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I love this. This is amazing. You've already given up three twists with this. So I can't wait to see what this journey goes. So what inspired you to pen this? - This play, I feel, it came to me in a very strange part of my life. I was preparing to take my horror play. Ivory's, which is about to enjoy another commercial run to Edinburgh Fringe Festival. And while I was working on it, I was invited by my friends Al Parker and Ashley Lauren Rogers to amazing trans playwrights and theater makers to be a part of workshop theater's trans affinity intensive, which invited just four transgender playwrights to develop new work. I was kind of kicking around a new idea for a play in horror that I hadn't written yet. I'm really fond of two-handers, but this play isn't a two-hander. And I really wanted to write something that every single scene was in a different national park. And I joked to a friend that I would love to create something for the tank's annual pride fest. I love to participate in tank's pride fest and I had wanted to write this road trip play. And I was pitching the very sentences I just told you to a friend who said, wow, there's nothing that says pride, like eating a bunch of rocks. And that made me laugh really hard. And so when I started in trans affinity intensive, it came together very fast this play last year. I wrote the first draft in about a week and I was workshopping it with a friend of mine at Yale, Alexander Thomas, a wonderful director who I grew up with in North Carolina. She's going to Yale for her directing degree and she had just directed my play ivories as her thesis at Yale. And I wanted to work with her again. So I quickly started working on this play and about a month into working on it, we said we really wanted to see it on our feet and I loved the tank and I emailed them and I asked if there was any space in September last year that we could do this play. And they said yes. And so for four sold out performances, we had our first workshop of this play and it went incredibly well. My favorite bit from this, there was a lot of things about that production that were really funny and really wonderful and that was one of the highs of my year last year. But my favorite was a tweet from Joey Sims who came to see it and he said every artist involved with I'm going to eat you alive at the tank deserves prison time. And I kind of want that tweet framed somewhere in my apartment that play then went on to the Eugene O'Neill National Player and Conference as a semi-finalist. We got multiple Broadway world nominations and we were shopping it around to different theaters. There were quite a few theaters that wanted to take it, including a theater that was trying to transfer it immediately in November. But I wanted a little more time with the play and an opportunity for residency at Culture Lab popped up. Their emergence residency and I applied and there's so many amazing queer people working at Culture Lab who were really into what the play is doing. The main character is non-binary for instance and there's an exploration of the binary within this character and their struggles with toxic masculinity within their trans identity. That is a huge recurring theme and Culture Lab was super into it and asked if instead of the residency they could just put it in their season, which of course we're really, really happy about. - That is all incredible. So I wanna kind of snowball off of that and I'm curious to know what has it been like developing this particular version of I'm going to eat you alive as we roll into we're about what six weeks away from the show going up I think? - Yes, we just finalized casting this morning. We just cast our, there'd been some negotiations going on back and forth, you know how casting goes for the lead role and we finally have our our roach and we're really, really excited about it. Developing this particular play, I've been a resident playwright with the Miami experimental theater group that just won a silver poem, Lakehouse Ranch.png, that is the name of the theater. Lakehouse Ranch.png. And my friend Brandon, their artistic director and I have been looking at a project in New York for some time. He directed my play rabbit, which is my adaptation loosely of "Lord of the Flies" in November last year and it remains one of the best productions of my work I've ever seen. And so when we needed to assemble a team for this version, which was a commercial run and it was very important to have like really solid all around create a team and I can't wait to say who's working on this play 'cause it's, I feel like I have a wealth of riches right now with my team and my cast. But it was a no brainer to ask Brandon who also just directed "Play Play" at, is the theater, I'm not sure if the theater's pronounced Iati or if it's I-A-T-I, one of the two. He just directed "Play Play" by Aaron Proctor and that was also amazing and enjoyed quite the success. And it felt like the next step up both for him and me to make this professional plunge with this production. So that's really exciting. As far as my process has gone, I'm a big reviser playwright. I am a huge rewriter. And I freeze the script before production begins and then we make minimal adjustments as the rehearsal process adjusts. I do a lot of workshops of my work before we hit the rehearsal room. So it's underwent like 10 major revisions since that production in September last year. And I've constantly been working on other plays. Like Afra mentioned, my play Frog Dinner that's going to Edinburgh, Horrfest, has been a huge chunk of my time this year. But this particular version of the play feels raw and emotional and it's a deeply funny play, but it never leans fully into camp. I'm not a big fan of camp horror if I'm honest with you. I like horror that is real and circumstantially funny. So the play's humor comes from its circumstances rather than actively seeking a joke or a punchline. And with this particular cast and their instincts, I think it's going to be a really raw evening of bloody good theater. - Again, another fantastic quote, a raw evening of bloody good theater. I love it. - Bloody literally, we have a splash zone on sale. - Kaz, well, I want to jump off of that because you kind of alluded into my next question, which is what is the message or thought you're hoping audiences take away? - Don't eat rocks, no, I'm kidding. That's a great question. I think I want people to leave thinking about how we hold on to our trauma and nostalgia and how it can warp over time when we abuse it as a crux. Roach's character is really struggling with holding on to his past and it's affecting his gender presentation, it's affecting his relationships and it's affecting his mental health. And I feel like anything further would be such a spoiler, but I think everyone can find something that really speaks to them because horror is so often about reflecting what's going on in our lives when it happens. I was just watching "Late Night with the Devil." The other night, have you seen that movie? It got under fire for the AI controversy, but I thought the movie was great. I agree with the AI criticisms though. It's really a shame. It's really a shame. Such a good movie is gonna be bogged down by that. I don't know why you would ever want that to be your legacy, but there's something really special about that film and how it talks about trauma and how it talks about masculinity and the boy club behavior of being in a circle full of men and how it can lead to you making deals with the devil, both literally and metaphorically, how you sign your soul away to something because you can't let it go. And there's a little bit of that in "I'm going to eat you alive" of like selling your soul to whatever the devil is inside you because you can't let go of this thing even though it's eating you alive, but a little pun right there. I think people are going to leave feeling morbidly curious about how we engage with our environment. And this is a play that is super environmental, both also both literally and metaphorically, we're out in nature so much, the main characters of van lifer. Something that I've thought about a lot recently and this happened while I was writing it and it wasn't directly inspired by it, but it's also like it feel, the play is not in conversation with what happened to Gabby Petito, the van lifer who was killed by her boyfriend. That was happening in unraveling as I was writing the play and I stayed away from it on purpose, but I've done a lot of research in its sense 'cause I feel like people are gonna think about a Gabby Petito when they see a van on stage and there will be a van on stage. I keep thinking about it because there's a level of like, Roach is documenting on video this van life adventure across America. And there's something to me about how social media warps our perception of reality that is genuinely terrifying to me. I try to spend a lot of time offline these days in general because I actually really don't like the effect that having an online presence has on anybody. And I feel like we've lost a sense of communication and also connection to people around us and nature and a lot of things. And when I think about Gabby Petito, I think about how the officers that answered that call for domestic violence were complicit in this woman's death. And I think about all the young women, even though this isn't a play about young women, there's no young women in this play. I think about how men get away with things and how men get away with murder and how they get away with harm. And in this play, there's a lot of that angle. And I'm not writing about Gabby Petito. I'm not writing about van lifeers all specifically, but there is a level of what is hiding behind these people when the camera is off that is part of this play that I think a lot of people will resonate with and feel uncomfortable with. I think horror theater and horror writing, my goal is never to please the audience, but to be honest. And I think a lot of fan service happens in horror plays in horror theater and in horror films, quite frankly, to make the fans happy and instead of that, I wanna write art that makes you think about it, leaving the theater and makes you uncomfortable and confront what makes you uncomfortable deep inside you without like exploiting the audience. It's not meant to exploit the audience. It's not meant to like shock and discuss the audience, but I think we have to think really hard about why this imagery, why now and what are we trying to say with it. And I want us to be thinking about how we carry ourselves on camera and without, I don't know if any of that made sense, I got ADHD. - No, I love that answer. I truly love that answer. I think that is fantastic. A lot of really great ideas mentioned there. Well, for my final question for this first part, I would love to know who do you hope have access to I'm going to eat you alive? - You know, every time I get the question from anyone that's like, who is your audience and who do you want to see this? I feel like I can't answer it anymore beyond like, there's a little something for everyone that isn't a minor in my place. I've been pleasantly surprised with my horror plays that are often about the carnality of youth, you know? There's something very carnal and very incestuous and very all-consuming about being young and in love that is something that I'm very drawn to and I write about a lot. I write about young people really f***ing each other up more than anything else. There's something very carnal about that that has resonated with people of all ages who are consenting adults. In my work that I can no longer say, like my audience is young people. One of the most pivotal audience reactions that I've had to my work was I've reached an Edinburgh where this 60-year-old man came up to me after and I was worried. I was like, man, he's not my typical demographic. What is he gonna get out of this play? And he was so moved to tears by the emotional story of that play and that plays about to reopen at the tank before we take it on an international tour, I've raised. So I'm double- I'm double-dipping right now between bugs and I've raised. So I feel like anybody who loves horror is going to really resonate with this A24-esque, like, grippingly emotional but also deeply funny and ironic play. It's not a satire, it's a tragic comedy. And I think anybody who really needs to laugh but also wants to be absorbed in something is gonna lose themselves on this trip with Roach. And I invite anybody who's curious to come see that adventure. So I don't think there's a specific audience. I think it's for everybody who likes horror and is not under the age of 18. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Well, on the second part of our interviews, we love giving our listeners a chance to get to know our guests a little bit better, pull the curtain back, if you will. And I know we're a little short on time so I wanna jump to my favorite question to ask guests. And that of course is, what is your favorite theater memory? - Oh, there's two off the top of my head and one was sitting across from Mark Crowley at the first preview of "The Boys in the Band" on Broadway. That was a monumental experience for me. My play "The Lesbian Play" is a response play to "The Boys in the Band" and that premiered off Broadway at the Triad Theater last year. And I was really sad that he'll never get to see that play. I really admire the work that Mark and so many other queer playwrights that come before me have done. My senior thesis in undergrad was on the contemporary evolution of queer theater in America from the 1960s onward. And I used "The Boys in the Band" as a jumping off point and queer history, AIDS liberation and trans liberation are core tenets of my practice as a human. Beyond being a theater maker. And I have a loved one who passed of AIDS in the '80s who was the only other, other than my sister who was also transgender, my only biological sibling is also a transgender woman. So she and I are really close on that. Our only other queer relative died of AIDS in the '80s and that it's something that is, I was born in the '90s, so I never knew him. But I think about an entire lost generation of people that I'll never get to speak to and that history is so important to me and I am an outspoken advocate for AIDS education. The other one, which is a little more like personally connected is the first Broadway show I ever saw was "A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder." And Steven Lutvak was on faculty of my program. I'm starting at NYU's graduate musical theater writing program, MFA, actually in two weeks. And I am so thankful that they let me into this program. I was the last person they added to their roster for this year. So I was studying another master's program and I decided to make a leap of faith and NYU took me in. But he was on faculty and he passed last year, but a big reason why I wanted to go to this program was his work was so influential on me. Both his style, his sense of humor and his musicality are things that speak deeply to me and that musical, I don't know if you saw it, I love to jump. I love "The Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder." It's so funny that that was super impactful on me and it's an honor to like follow in his footsteps and go to the program that he was so monumental in after. Hopefully I'll write a really scary musical or something. Who knows? I'm actually really into y'all alternative music. I actually love bluegrass and like country rock and I would like to write a folk musical so bad, but not necessarily horror, we'll see. - I love those memories. Those are so fantastic. Thank you for sharing those. Well, as we wrap things up, I would love to know, do you have any other projects or productions coming on the pipeline that we can plug for you? I mean, you've mentioned several things happening both here in New York and around the world. - In 2024, my schedule is pretty set with three different productions of my work going up. Actually four are my bad, but 2025, there's some big things coming that I can't even say yet and I've been sitting on it. My best friend knows and no one else and that's it. Not even my family knows what's happening in 2025. Coming up actually next month, Ivery's is making a New York return engagement at the tank running September 22nd through the 29th before we move on to an international tour in Copenhagen and other locations to be announced. I'm going to Edinburgh Horror Fest in October with my true crime play Frog Dinner, which is an episode of a cult documentary like Netflix's Keep Sweet, Pray, and Obai about a cult of people that believe in their next life they will become frogs. That 60 minute banger of a play is hitting my sweet spot right now and I'm really fond of it. I'm going to eat your live opens October 3rd, runs all the way through the 27th and then also in Miami, my play Ragweeds Opens with Lake House Ranch Shop PNG as my second residency play. I'm excited for all of those. I will be seeing them all and I can't wait, especially to get started on Ivery's because I'll be returning to the stage for the first time as an equity actor on that production after playing that role for two years. So it feels like a little milestone, that little Riley would have been really, really proud of to hear that I'm equity now. Congratulations, it's a magazine. - Thank you. - With all of these irons in the fire, especially some big stuff coming in 2025, that is a great lead into my final question, which is if our listeners would like more information about I'm going to eat you alive or about you, maybe they'd like to reach out to you, how can they do so? - Yeah, they can go to my website and fill out the contact form or they can follow me on Instagram and if I'm active enough to notice they can slide right in my DMs and let me know. They can also go to the Culture Lab website, culturelablic.org and book tickets or contact their info and the wonderful artistic director and their team can probably answer if I'm not available for any reason. - Perfect. Well Riley, thank you so, so much for taking the time to sit down with us and talk to us about this amazing show. I cannot wait, I'm so excited. So thank you again and thank you so much again for your time, I really appreciate it. - Thank you for having me. I was really excited to talk to you today and it's been lovely. - Thank you. My guest today has been the amazing playwright, Riley Elton McCarthy whose new show is being presented by Basement Light Productions and Culture Lab LIC. It's entitled, "I'm Going to Eat You Alive" and it's playing October 3rd through the 27th at Culture Lab LIC. You can get your tickets and more information by visiting culturelablic.org. We also have some contact information for our guests which will be posting on our episode description as well as on our social media posts, but truly run. Don't walk, get your tickets now, they're going to sell out and you're not gonna wanna miss this. It is the perfect fall show, the perfect spooky season show. It is just that good. It's, "I'm Going to Eat You Alive" playing October 3rd through the 27th. And we wanna add for our American listeners that election day is November 5th. Make sure you are registered to vote, have a plan to cast your ballot and do your democratic duty. You can find out how and where you can register to vote by visiting vote.gov. The future demands that we fight for it now. So until next time, I'm Andrew Cortez reminding you to turn off your cell phones, unwrap your candies and keep talking about the theater. - In a stage whisper. - Thank you. (upbeat music) - If you like what you hear, please leave a five star review, like and subscribe. - You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram at stagewhisperpod. - And feel free to reach out to us with your comments and personal stories at stagewhisperpod@gmail.com. - And be sure to check out our website for all things stage whisper and theater. You'll be able to find merchandise, tours, tickets and more. Simply visit stagewhisperpod.com. Our theme song is Maniac by Jazzar. Other music on this episode provided by Jazzar and Billy Murray. 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