COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL • JUNE 27, 2018 •
11A
Theater Q&A: An evening in Joe Musso’s ‘'Treehouse’
By Zach Silva
zsilva@cgsentinel.com
T
he Cottage Th eatre
brought in Joe Mus-
so from Alabama on
Monday night to discuss his
upcoming play, “Treehouse,”
which will premiere in town
in August.
Th e play centers around
a 17-year old, Johnny (Mal-
akhai Schnell) that insists he
is a 53-year-old man trapped
in the wrong body and the
play follows his journey as he
deals with growing up, love
and loss.
With the help of a grant
from the Lane County Cul-
tural Coalition, the theatre
applied for a play from the
American Association of
Community Th eatre’s 2018
NewPlayFest. Aft er being
selected from a competitive
fi eld, volunteers from the
local theatre were sent 12
scripts that they pored over
until selecting Musso’s entry.
Musso was around for the
weekend and worked with
the cast on the play.
On Monday evening, com-
munity members came to the
theatre where the audience
engaged in a question and
answer with Musso in addi-
tion to seeing the production
of one of his 10-minute plays.
What follows are some of
the answers from Monday’s
event that have been edited
for clarity.
Did you always want to be a
playwright?
JM: No, I think I actual-
ly wanted to be a zookeep-
er when I was growing up. I
didn’t actually start writing
plays until I was almost 40.
What did you do before
that?
JM: Actually, I was a college
English professor for four or
fi ve years and decided that I
needed to go out and make
money so then I became a
lawyer. And I was a lawyer
for many, many years. Now
I work in the federal court
system as an administrator. I
continue to work a full-time
job.
But before playwriting, I
tried writing poetry, I tried
writing fi ction. It wasn’t un-
til I realized my real talent
was in dialogue that I started
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writing plays.
How would you say that
being a lawyer informed your
playwriting?
JM: What informed my
playwriting most was my love
of literature. I’m a voracious
reader. But being a lawyer
still did help. I’ve taken a few
thousand depositions. And
I mean, I’m not low-balling,
a few thousand depositions.
I was thinking, ‘Okay, I’m not
going to start a play and not
fi nish it.’
So that discipline of just —
when I was a lawyer I would
sometimes work 80 hours a
week and stay up real late at
night writing depositions or
briefs and that really kind of
helped me learn to push my-
self beyond my mental limits
even though my brain was
“Each play usually has a
eureka moment. For which
I call a kernel. And the fi nal
project will look really
nothing like that kernel.”
— Joe Musso, playwriter
And you really get to hear
people speak.
You get to hear them an-
swer questions. A lot of times
they want to answer you in
the shortest way possible be-
cause they really don’t want
to be there.
Th ere’s oft entimes confl ict
but you get to hear a lot of
speech patterns, voice pat-
terns of people from diff erent
socioeconomic
standings.
From CEOs of companies to
a great cross section of soci-
ety. It just helped my ear a lot,
hearing all those voices.
And also, before I became
a lawyer I think I was a lit-
tle lazy in how I handled my
writing projects. Once I be-
came a lawyer, it taught me
discipline as to, ‘Th ese people
are paying me a lot of money
to write these very long com-
plicated briefs.’ So, you know,
I would always fi nish them.
When I started writing plays
tired.
I do my playwriting at
night and I usually am very
tired when I write and peo-
ple always say, ‘I love how
you write such short lines’
and I’m like, ‘I don’t have the
mental capacity to write long
lines at that hour.’
How do you start a new
play?
JM: Each play usually has
a eureka moment. For which
I call a kernel. And the fi nal
project will look really noth-
ing like that kernel. But I will
start to get chracters in my
head and I will start to think
about how these characters
think and how these charac-
ters sound. Th en I start fi ll-
ing up notebooks. I just start
writing possible dialogue,
what the characters may look
like — I doodle. I can’t draw
so just stick fi gures.
I literally just start fi lling up
notebooks and at some point
I realize, ‘Okay, if you are go-
ing to write a play you have to
write dialogue.’ So I just start
putting dialogue in that char-
acter’s mouth and that helps
me. Once I start writing dia-
logue, the character becomes
more focused in my head.
A lot of times I will give
that character a name early
on but that won’t usually be
the name that ends up with
the play.
Th is case was diff erent.
Johnny was Johnny from
the start. I’ve written a full-
length play since “Tree-
house” and it is titled Au-
brey and the title character
is named Aubrey. But for
the fi rst several months her
name was Carlotta
Sometimes I’ll think of
scenes of dialogue and I’ll
just write it down. It may
take a year or two before I
think about putting some
of that in a play that doesn’t
even exist in my head yet.
Where were you when you
got the initial idea for Tree-
house?
JM: I had a play reading
in Los Angeles and it was
just a charity reading at a li-
brary. And so my wife and
I are out there and we have
some friends that work at the
Dorchester hotel group, so
we stayed at the beautiful ho-
tel Bel Air.
So we’d been drinking in
the lounge so we thought
we would just go for a walk
down Stone Canyon Road. So
we went walking down Stone
Canyon Road and if you’ve
ever walked in Bel Air, it’s
very dangerous because they
don’t want you walking in Bel
Air — so they build all their
hedges to the end of the road.
It’s a windy road and people
are driving very fast in their
very expensive sports cars.
And then these two fi gures
start coming down the road
and they are wearing white
bathrobes. Th is was Oscars
weekend. And these two fi g-
ures are coming down and, as
they got closer, I looked at my
wife and said, ‘Th at looks like
Oprah Winfrey.’
And it was Oprah Winfrey.
She and her friend Gayle.
I guess they were going to
the spa at the Hotel Bel Air or
whatever. I don’t know why
they were walking down the
middle of the street wearing
bathrobes.
She’s very nice, by the way.
She waved and said hello.
She’s from Mississippi, I’m
from Alabama so we knew
the language. And that was
the extent of the conversation
— “Hello, hello.” And we kept
walking.
She was very nice.
As we left , I looked at my
wife and said the fi rst thing
that pops in my head; I need
to write a play about it. And
so I just looked on the hillside
behind this house and I kind
of visualized a man covered
in blood, standing up, walk-
ing down and walking to a
house. A woman then says
you have to go and then he
takes off running down Stone
Canyon Road.
When you see "Treehouse",
you’ll say that has nothing to
do with "Treehouse".
When I got back to the
hotel room — we probably
stopped at the bar before we
got to the hotel room — I just
started writing notes about
this 50-some odd year old
man and somehow that man
became a 17-year-old boy
who was in a treehouse and
that’s how “Treehouse” came
into existence.
"Treehouse" runs at the Cot-
tage Th eatre from August 10
to August 26. Tickets go on
sale on July 10.
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