My Digital Couch: A Conversation with Renaissance Woman Emily C. A. Snyder

Photo by Lisa LaGrande.

Emily C. A. Snyder is no stranger to the stage, exploring and creating theater as an actor, singer, playwright, director and producer. She founded her own company, TURN TO FLESH PRODUCTIONS, dedicated to developing and producing new plays in heightened text. In February Snyder will be starring in TTF's new production, Juliet and Her Romeo, a re-examination of William Shakespeare's famous tragic romance, written by Snyder herself. She sat down with me on my digital couch recently to talk about her journey to this moment.

This interview has been edited for length.

Z: Emily, let's start with your writing background. How long have you been writing verse plays, and what drew you to that particular style of storytelling?
ECAS: It's funny: I started writing verse plays because the director I was collaborating with wouldn't let me write an opera!  That was in 2008, when I first started writing Cupid and Psyche.  The themes of that story were so huge, they had to be in music or verse - and she chose verse.

Working in this heightened text, it felt like it burst me open at the seams.  Prior to that, I'd made a career of writing fairy tale and farces, but all of those prose plays remained fairly light.  Working in verse required me to bare parts of my soul in epic poetry that hadn't been open to me before.  It was the opportunity to work more truly, more rawly, more universally, to go into the dark in order to find the light. 

Because characters can speak in soliloquy, too, we have the opportunity to really delve into a person's psyche: thoughts that they'd never dare express out loud.  There's something intimate and exciting in that. 

Z: Ah, so you turned your arias into soliloquies! Neat trick. :)

ECAS: Haha!  Yes, basically arias become soliloquies!  And I definitely hear verse as spoken music: tempo, changing time signatures, etc.

My Digital Couch: A Conversation with Playwright James Parenti

Photo by Trish Phelps.

Playwright, actor, songwriter, and producer James Parenti has a story to tell. His play, May Violets Spring, "a new story for a new Ophelia," will be presented later this month by Turn To Flesh Productions, a company with the motto "Modern Themes. Classic Style." James and I had a seat on my digital couch this past week to chat about the play's journey and when it's okay to futz with Shakespeare. The following is a slightly edited version of our conversation.

Z: Let's start at the beginning - what prompted you to write May Violets Spring?
JP: About six years ago, I was involved with the theater company The Other Mirror. Their artistic director - the incredibly talented Katherine M. Carter - and I had known each other for years, and we were discussing doing a production of Hamlet, bouncing around ideas. I'd somehow gotten it into my head that it would be cool to have Ophelia onstage during Hamlet's first few soliloquies. In my mind, this would help solidify their relationship, and deepen the tragedy of them losing each other (I learned years later that Sir Derek Jacobi had done something similar in his touring Hamlet in the '70s). But then, what self-respecting person would sit silently while the one they love agonizes? Why wouldn't she speak up, try to help? It was really exciting to see these soliloquies as scenes rather than speeches. Ophelia's already an incredibly interesting character in Hamlet proper, but to see her bouncing around ideas with one of the most brilliant characters in the English-speaking theater was extremely satisfying.

I was also interested in a particular interpretation of Ophelia's mad scene. One of the flowers she distributes is rue, which historically was used as an abortifacient: i.e., could be used to induce a miscarriage to rid oneself of an unwanted pregnancy. Therefore: was Ophelia pregnant? Did she have a more sexual relationship with Hamlet than we had explicitly seen onstage? I don't think this is the only interpretation, but it's one I believe is supported by the text. So I took it upon myself to write a few lines in blank verse to add to the play. I thought that if they were written in such a way, they might sound enough like Shakespeare than an audience might not realize the lines hadn't always been there.

And when I brought these ideas to Katherine, she pointed out what I hadn't realized: changes like these weren't just modifications to Hamlet; they were changing something fundamental about it. This was the beginning of an adaptation, a new play. She was the first person to encourage me to not write only a few lines, but to see how far this rabbit hole would take me. Turns out, it's a pretty deep hole.