Still Going Strong

A conversation with IRT playwright-in-residence James Still on the eve of his 10-year anniversary season.

By Helen W. O’Guinn

James Still wasn’t born in Indiana, but you wouldn’t know it from his scripts. The Kansas native has been absorbing and transforming the culture here for a decade now as playwright-in-residence at Indiana Repertory Theatre. Still lives in L.A

most of the time, but he also spends a lot of time in Indianapolis (he calls himself an “outside insider”), as well as in cities around the globe where he works in theater, movies, and television.

Celebrating the 10th anniversary of a collaboration so successful that no one has even talked about an end game, IRT is staging two of Still’s works simultaneously: on the Main Stage, Looking Over the President’s Shoulder (through May 3), a story of Hoosier Alonzo Fields, who served as chief butler during four White House administrations; and, on the Upper Stage, Iron Kisses (through May 11), which addresses more contemporary issues, including being gay in the heartland.

This spring, on the eve of the opening of the two plays, I spoke with Still about the works and his Hoosier experience.

It strikes me that having two shows running by the same playwright in the same theater is virtually unheard of.

Yes, it’s extremely rare. I think most writers in Americantheater would say that we are lucky to have one play on, let alone two at the same place. You can give people plaques, you can have articles in magazines, but let’s face it, as an artist, what do I want most? I want my work to be shared with audiences. In a sense, it’s the perfect way to honor a relationship between a writer and a theater. So this certainly shows IRT’s commitment to my work.

How do you balance it when you have two going on? Is it somewhat schizophrenic?

I don’t know yet—rehearsals start for the second play this week. If someone told me 10 years ago that IRT was going to have two of my plays at once, I would have thought, What? That’s insane! Who would ever do that?

It seems to me that these shows are very different. Looking Over the President’s Shoulder is historical in nature. On the other hand, you have called Iron Kisses “a bigger mirror—a show that vulnerably includes my true self.”

A.

I always try to locate myself personally in whatever I write—that’s true whether it’s something historic or something completely imagined. Even Iron Kisses is historic in that it’s about the history of a family, about a particular six months in a family’s life. The bigger mirror that I refer to has to do with the way family is explored theatrically. It’s a deceptively simple play in which two actors play brother and sister as well as their own parents. The brother is gay and invites his parents to his wedding; the sister is straight and simultaneously announces that she has decided to divorce her husband. As a gay man, I’m a kind of ghost in this play, maybe risking a different level of personal vulnerability than I might if I were writing solely about a historic character. But I wanted to explore love in its many forms.

Looking Over the President’s Shoulder is also about relationships, and, I suppose, love plays into it?

Love, absolutely. And sacrifice. Dreams deferred. Alonzo Fields gave up his dream of a career as an opera singer for a job to support his family during the Depression. That job happened to be as a butler at the White House, where he ultimately became chief butler. He went there thinking he would stay for the winter. That winter lasted 21 years. Mr. Fields was born in Lyles Station, Indiana, and moved to Indianapolis as a boy, where he worked a variety of jobs while pursuing his love of music. That love of music, of art, would eventually inform his life as a butler in the White House. The end of Looking Over the President’s Shoulder is about how that love of art taught him about serving his country, serving the presidents and their families, and about how a job well-done was finally the reward, truly something to be proud of. Love is at the core of Looking Over the President’s Shoulder, and it’s one of the unlikely things that links the play with Iron Kisses.

It strikes me that Looking Over the President’s Shoulder would have never happened had it not been for Indiana

That’s certainly what the Fields family thinks. One of the things that many of them have said to me is, “This story was always out there. Anyone could have done it, but you are the one who found it. You are the one who did something with it.” It’s curious why some stories present themselves to us as writers when they do. I think as a writer, you have a responsibility to make a choice at that moment. Do I pay attention to this providence or do I walk away from it? And, if I do, will it wait for me?

You have said that when you write a play you’re writing up until the curtain rises, and I know you’ve directed your own plays as well. As you are watching all the stuff onstage, do you have the urge to make adjustments to the play, responding to the way the actors are portraying the characters?

I love actors. They are so courageous and generous to writers because they are out there trying things on long before an audience sees a play, and they do the best they can with whatever they are given. I’m routinely watching the things they struggle with in the workshops. I’ve found that if actors make the same mistakes over and over, if they hit the same wall, I have to ask myself if there is something preventing them from getting through that, or is there something in my text that I need to take a look at.

You learn a whole new set of information by watching an audience see a play. You’re removed, and yet you are kind of in the middle of it. It feels like you are at your own family dinner and you don’t know all the people, but all the people know you. Sometimes it’s a dream and sometimes it’s a nightmare. It just depends on the night and the situation.

Right now you’re dividing your lifebetween Los Angeles and Indiana

When you work on pieces here, you’re surrounded by Hoosiers. Then you go away and come back, bringing adifferent perspective. How has that influenced the work you’ve done here over the years?

While the IRT is my primary relationship to the theater, I work at many, many theaters. Last week, on Sunday night I was in Kansas City where I did a reading. The next morning I got on a plane and came here, where we started rehearsals for Looking Over the President’s Shoulder. I was here for a couple of days and then flew to Washington, D.C., where I did a cold reading of my new two-hour play. Eight hours later, I went to Connecticut to meet with a director, and then I flew back to Los Angeles. I was there all week working on other things.

So in a way, the IRT is the touchstone for me. It’s the place where people know how I work, people know who I am as an artist. The fact that I don’t have to prove that to somebody means that when I’m here, I can really focus on work. When I’m out working at new places, it’s exhausting because it’s like you’re on a first date—and it’s a long first date when trying to get to know someone you are working with. I’m not dating the IRT anymore; we’re now living together.

You said once that you might be the luckiest writer in America

I believe that. There are very few writers in our country who have a relationship like I have with the IRT. Writer friends have asked me, quite frankly with envy, “How did you get this? How did it happen?”

How did it happen?

Janet Allen, the artistic director at the IRT, called me in 1997 to suggest I apply for a two-year grant called the National Artist Residency Grant. The philosophy behind it was to pair up artists and institutions that had anexisting relationship but were looking to go deeper. At that point the IRT had produced two of my plays on the Upper Stage. And I was delighted that she thought of me. But I also told her very clearly that I never get grants. So if she really wanted to get this one, she might want to try to find another writer. She didn’t, and I’m still here.

How did you stretch two years to 10?

I really credit Janet and the board. The IRT had never had a playwright on board, and I had never been a playwright-in-residence, so we were all making this up in the beginning. We knew that some things were going to fail and some things were going to work, and we had to have a sense of humor about it. I started to approach it in a way that I would approach a play: I’ll just start with a blank page and this will write itself. And that’s what happened. The board and audiences, the staff and the actors, bought into the idea that I would be part of this institution. So now I’m part of the budget. And I never knew I would make so many friends here. I’ve met plenty of local writers and audience members—it has really changed my life.

But you’re only in Indy a small part of the year. How are you able to connect with this place so well when you’re always off to the next destination?

Well, my great-grandmother came to the U.S. by herself from Norway when she was 17 years old. As the oldest child from a big family, she was sent ahead by herself. Unable to speak English, she would just have to make her way the best she could. I don’t think she even knew where she was going when she landed, but she did make her way. I think about her a lot. Here I am, three generations later, and every day as a writer I do the same thing she did as an immigrant: I set out for an unknown place not knowing where I’m going; I don’t speak the language (because every play has its own language); I don’t know the people (characters usually begin as strangers to me). And then I go about my business and find my way. I imagine that’s just what my great-grandma did.