Episode 57: Acting Up: Interview with Playwright Steven Stack Lindsay talks with playwright Steven Stack. He's got a fantastic new one act melodrama coming out called She Wrote, Died, Then Wrote Some More.

Show Notes

Plays by Steven Stack

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Episode Transcript

Lindsay: Welcome to TFP, The Theatrefolk Podcast. I am Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Espero que estés bien. Gracias por escucharme.

Alright. So today we are acting up with another Theatrefolk playwright interview. Today I am so pleased to talk to Steven Stack. We have one of Steven’s plays already in our catalogue, The Bottom of the Lake, and upcoming, the fantastic melodrama mystery, She Wrote, Died, Then Wrote Some More. But more on that in a moment. So first I have to say, hello Steven. Hi.

Steven: Hi, Lindsay.

Lindsay: How are you?

Steven: I'm doing great. I just got back from a carnival, and the family’s all asleep now at this point. [Laughs]

Lindsay: So basically you've worn them out…

Steven: Exactly.

Lindsay: …and so you can have a couple of minutes to talk to us.

Steven: Absolutely.

Lindsay: So first off, where are you right now? Where are you?

Steven: I am in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, which is the land of the trolls.

Lindsay: Oh, like really? Like what kind of trolls?

Steven: Well, they're wooden trolls. They have been carved. I don’t know the actual history but there are a lot of them, and there was a recent article that said that we needed more, so now they're recruiting like a bunch of wood carvers and they're all working on giving us more trolls, so it's going to be awesome.

Lindsay: So does that happen often, that life is so good in Wisconsin that…

Steven: [Laughs]

Lindsay: …[laughs] the needing of more trolls is an issue?

Steven: I suppose. It was a front page in our Mount Horeb newspaper…

Lindsay: [Laughs]

Steven: …so it's big time.

Lindsay: See, I love that. See, that's the kind of place that I want to live in. [Laughs]

Steven: It's pretty festive. It's a highly enjoyable place to live.

Lindsay: So that's my next question. So have you always lived in Wisconsin?

Steven: Oh no, I am actually from South Carolina, and I was teaching there full-time. I had just started a drummer program for sixth, seventh and eighth grade, and then I auditioned for a play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Lindsay: Yup.

Steven: And there I met my stage manager Maggie. Turned out that we were meant to be together, I suppose. We got married, and she was going to get her master’s degree at UW-Madison and...

Lindsay: And you just followed along and the rest is history.

Steven: Oh yeah, I thought it was pretty awesome. I was like, “Okay, I'm all set up here in South Carolina, and let's just leave everything and see how it turns out,” so.

Lindsay: [Laughs]

Steven: [Laughs]

Lindsay: That's okay. Craig and I, my Theatrefolk partner, we met in a play as well, only I was playing Lizzie Borden.

Steven: Oh, nice!

Lindsay: And he was dad, so at the end of every night, basically ended up with me with a huge meat cleaver over his head.

Steven: [Laughs]

Lindsay: So, you know, theatre romance is…

Steven: It's a beautiful thing. [Laughs]

Lindsay: So since you are there, what is it like being a playwright in an area that is sort of nontraditional, I would say, for theatre?

Steven: Well, I'm fortunate that there's a studio that I happened to work at in Mount Horeb called Forte Studios, and there's dancing, acting and voice there. So I get to do a lot of my stuff there because I'm the writer for them, and we have a lot of talented kids there, and then we're only about 20 minutes away from Madison…

Lindsay: Oh, okay.

Steven: …which is huge for the arts. So it works out really nicely.

Lindsay: I love that. I love hearing about places that—you know,