Interview with Samm Murphy and Julia Nardin

Over the weekend, director Beau Prichard sat down with playwrights Samm Murphy and Julia Nardin to discuss the process of writing Starling: Confrontational's next full production, scheduled to open this June at theLAB@INScape.

First I’ll give you a question by proxy. Several times when I’ve told people what the show is about, I’ve been asked if you have a personal connection to the subject material. If not, what drew you to the subject matter?

Julia: World War II and the years leading up to it are a pivotal period in human history, and it holds a sacred place in our popular culture because of its transformative power. Unfortunately, all the “best” war stories are written by men, about men. It’s rare to find film or literature featuring heroes like Irene Sendler, Sophie Scholl and Virginia Hall, or any kind of media at all that examines the war from a female perspective. And there’s so much to choose from: Forced prostitution in the Pacific. Allied spies who wielded their gender as a weapon against the Nazis. Mass rapes committed by Soviet soldiers after Germany’s capitulation. The eight hundred thousand women who served in the Soviet Army. Samm and I decided we wanted to write a war story with female protagonists that took place during a conflict in which women played a significant role because there weren’t enough. That story is Starling.

When you’re writing about a real time and place, I imagine it can be completely different than just making things up from scratch. Tell me about keeping your writing grounded in historical fact.

Samm: We're writing fictional characters, in a fictional cellar, but the war unfolding over their heads was devastatingly real and still fresh in the minds of many. I find that writing about reality is about taking bits and pieces of true event and letting them shine, bringing with them their context to texture the story you're creating. You're always worrying, though, not only that you got something wrong but that you missed something important.

Julia: It helps to approach the process of writing a play like a dramaturg approaches a full production. There’s a book called Rising ‘44 by Norman Davies, and it’s roughly the size and weight of a cement block. It was also our bible while we wrote the first draft of the play.

Samm: Most of our research and focus wound up concentrating on the events of the Uprising and the timeline, reading anecdotes, and digging up texts like radio recordings and translated leaflets that occurred during that time period. We tried to create a vivid picture for ourselves and write from there.

I’m always fascinated by how differently writers operate. Where do you write? Do you need a particular kind of environment? Do you do a warm-up exercise?

Samm: I write at home, for the most part, or sneak out some words during lunchbreak at work. A lot of writers need or like playing music while they work - I am part of the stalwart minority who require dead silence or irrelevant background noise! Tea, coffee, or obligatory horrible energy drink is generally on hand when I begin, and warm up is mainly just reviewing material that inspires me and remembering that I can fix it in post.

Julia: Being in a familiar environment distracts me. I worry about the dishes in the sink or the last time I stripped the sheets off the bed to do laundry. Stupid, mundane anxieties. I end up rearranging the furniture and shopping for antique taxidermy on eBay. Cafes and libraries are great for getting real work done. There’s less space to procrastinate.

Tell me a little bit about writing with a partner, especially one that can’t sit in the same room with you.

Julia: Samm lives in Wellington. I live in Seattle. Our biggest obstacle is probably consistency. You want the end result to be so amalgamous that no one is going to ask you who wrote what because no one should be able to pick up on the fact that there are two of you. That’s very hard, even when you have similar voices and don’t encounter a lot of aesthetic friction.

Samm: I love writing with a partner. The constant feedback and encouragement and criticism is a luxury that you don't get when you're on a solo venture, and knowing you can bounce around ideas for hours with someone without feeling like you're driving your friend or family member insane is great. It is very difficult when said writer lives on the other side of the world, but fortunately Julia and I are pretty comfortable talking over fleeting Facebook messages and Skype, and working out of online shared documents.

Julia, you’re a relatively new import to Seattle. Tell me some of the things you appreciate about it.

Julia: The gloom. Is that weird? I love waking up to the rain beading on my bedroom window, and looking out to see the city washed in fog. Moss grows here like crazy. The people are polite. The seagulls are polite. A wealth of trees. Ocean smell. It’s a long list...

Tell me some things you appreciate about the city’s theatre community.

Julia: Seattle is a city that spends a lot of the year in the dark. It’s damp. It’s cold. But the people here just radiate warmth - there’s a genuine desire to be inclusive and see everyone succeed, artistically and financially. I have a very dear friend who has sort of been guiding me through the process and encouraging me to take risks that would be much more difficult in a less supportive environment. For a young playwright producing new work, it’s an incredible gift.

In your experience, is Seattle a particularly good place for new works?

Julia: Seattle has a lot of very talented playwrights with strong, recognizable voices. It’s also home to companies like Annex and Macha Monkey, which are committed to championing new work. Staged readings happen all the time in every imaginable nook and cranny you can fit a few rows of collapsible chairs. There’s a real network here. The issue is that most other playwrights I know don’t have the resources they need to connect with producers who can finance full productions of their work in a viable performance space at a price everyone can afford. I’m working with a contact at the Dramatist’s Guild of America and a team of smaller theatre companies to curate a reading series that should empower Seattle’s emerging playwrights by connecting them with working producers and directors. We want to start having more discussions about storytelling. What are the stories that need to be told right now? How do we accommodate that? Who’s being represented and who isn’t?

What about Wellington?

Samm: I'm very fortunate to have landed in Wellington, which is a city where we say that a good day is particularly beautiful, and not only because it can be a bit bleak and pendulous the rest of the time. It's the capital of our country as well as the capital of our arts, with an incredibly diverse theatre community, and fertile ground for creativity. Our calendar revolves around the annual Fringe festival and biennial Festival of the Arts, with three major playhouses bringing in new material all the time. BATS Theatre in particular serves to foster new talent, which is also where Flight of the Conchord cut their professional performing teeth more than a decade ago. But I'd also want to credit the vaguely gritty underside where art is performed on the regular in dim bars and music venues, making for a low key, tight knit community of likeminded creatives, and home to some of my best friends.

Did you put the script through a final polish or anything to ensure that it had a singular voice? The script, as I read it, certainly feels consistent.

Samm: I think Julia and I enjoy a certain feel and texture of dialogue and atmosphere, and Starling hopefully has a particular feel to it. All the characters must be distinct, but they must all come from the same world and situation. We have both tried our hand at writing each character, and are shameless about going in and editing each others work, which is a barrier that has to blur if you're writing with a partner to produce a consistent script. At least, this was the case for Starling.

Julia: Right. When we talk about voice, we’re not talking about character voice - I hope that no two characters we’ve written are using exactly the same word choices and speech patterns to communicate. I’m talking about individual writing style, and I think Samm sometimes gets irritated with me because I’m very finicky, very particular, whereas she makes a lot of strong choices in the initial stages that she stands by until that final polishing happens. It’s a good quality to have in a writing partner.

Even if we only consider the historical distance, regardless of gender and culture, there's a big gap between folks today and those you are writing about. How do you approach that gap? How do you find the voices of people who, to one degree or another, really existed?

Samm: Fortunately, people are still people. I think it's important to make the dialogue relatable to a modern audience, but at the same time, you want people to sound like they come from where they come from. Reading literature from whatever era you're aiming for is helpful to capture a voice and a presence, I think, but that will always be framed through the voice of that author - so read diversely, and take chances.

Julia: English has become fairly relaxed in the last fifty years. We don’t speak or write with the same sort of specificity that we used to. When we communicate, it tends to be short and sloppy - it’s like bad sex that way. You get what you need from it, but there’s a lot you lose when you don’t really take time to explore and seek out all those little nuances. Writers are always trying to choose the right words. It’s a learned skill. That helps.

You’ve put a lot of work into the script since the table read 11 months ago. How different was the process after hearing the script out loud?

Julia: I always overwrite when it comes to the first draft. There’s too much, it’s too heavy, the pacing drags. Hearing a script read out loud helps identify what I can cut because it isn’t as important or as truthful to the story as I initially thought it was. We disassemble and reassemble. There’s a lot of editing involved. A lot of rewriting.

Samm: You realise that what you wanted to convey might not be getting conveyed, that the message is being lost in too many words, or the wrong approach is being taken. Since the reading, the script has been stripped back, fleshed out, stripped back again, in order to rediscover the bones of the story.

Do you write in other mediums other than theatre? Do you “art” in mediums other than theatre?

Julia: I read more poetry than I write poetry, but I occasionally perform my work at open mics, and have participated in a few slams. When I was a little younger, I had some erotica published under an assumed name to help pay the bills, among other things - I’m not sure that quite counts as art.

Samm: I fail to maintain at least one poetry blog, but it's always there whenever I feel the compulsion. I am constantly working on the next great New Zealand novel, which never has a form that stays fixed for long. I like Julia's idea about writing erotica, maybe I'll give that a go. But in seriousness, I have a strong passion for filmmaking, and I hope to participate in the vibrant independent film community here in Wellington as well as its theatre.

Finally, after the process of years, knowing that the play is being handed off to be performed, what is the most important thing you learned about writing? What’s the thing you’re most proud of?

Samm: Finish what you started. No matter how much you doubt yourself, a writer always has the ego to look back at their work in retrospect and say 'not bad'. The uphill struggle should be anticipated and conquered, and I hope to carry this lesson over into new projects.

Julia: You learn that you never stop learning. I think it’s wonderful, actually. As I’ve grown and matured as an individual, so has my voice as a writer. I’m proud that writers get to age gracefully, even if our work doesn’t.

Welcome to the Cast of Starling

It is official, we had our first script reading on Sunday night with the complete cast of Starling. Please join us in welcoming these talented, intelligent performers.

Starling is a drama set during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. It follows a Polish nurse, Halina, who has the war brought to her doorstep in an urgent and immediate fashion, pushing her out of the protective shell she has built for herself and bringing her face to face with the cost of war and the price of freedom.

Although it is, believe it or not, entirely coincidental that all three of our big annual shows thus far have revolved around central women characters (Catherine in Proof and Lainie in Two Rooms), it is very gratifying to continue the trend with our casting of Katherine Jett as Halina in Starling. Katherine is a Tennessee native who has done everything from Shakespeare festivals to big musicals and a little bit of everything in between. Most recently she was involved with the traditional Christmas pantomime at Federal Way's Centerstage for her second year running. She is also a writer and performer on the webseries Imaginary Friends. Halina covers a lot of emotional ground in this play, and Katherine brings the necessary mix of fire and ice, strength and fragility to portray this complex, haunted character. Additionally, Katherine is fascinated by the smaller, less well-known aspects and stories of World War Two, and we always value additional facets of connection with a project.

Danika Golombek has a unique connection to the material of Starling in that she is of Polish descent. She will be playing Klara, Halina's younger half-sister, and we discovered that she was engaging and capable as soon as she entered the room. She began acting at the age of 10 and started training as a classical soprano at the age of 11. Another character describes Klara, who is a photographer for the resistance, as "leaving a trail of fire" behind her, and Danika brings that kind of presence to the role, allowing her to encompass Klara's mixture of naivete and passion.

Tom Stewart is coming off his run as the ruthlessly evil Iago in Ghost Light's punk rock Othello, Black Vengeance. He has been a regular at Seattle Theater Readers, and we were glad to see him again after he had a strong audition for Two Rooms. He will play Otto, someone who appears straightforward, but who raises a lot of questions and who doesn't always have a clear or obvious motivation. Tom's handle on portraying this ambiguity was immediate, and his easy portrayal of nervous energy will be essential as well.

Henryk was a role we knew could prove a challenge. He is referred to as an animal in the script more than once, and he needs to have a menace to him that remains close to the surface throughout. Admittedly, that is something we could teach or develop with a performer, but in this case, it was easier to find one who had that attribute down cold. Stefan Hajek asked to audition specifically for Henryk, but he wasn't available the weekend of our auditions. He was, however, willing to film an audition for us, and his extensive experience in film acting clearly helped him in this regard. He nailed the potential threat that Henryk is, and at callbacks showed us he could handle the rest of Henryk's range as well. This is not his first rodeo with World War Two history, either, as he produced and featured in a short film, Decimation, set during the same period.

Last year David Klein was seen as Block in New Century's The Trial and as Gertrude in Ghost Light's gender-flipped Hamlet. We're very pleased to have him join our cast as Jozef, the professor turned wartime leader. He has a high position in the Bureau, the body that governs the Polish underground and resistance. He brings a gravitas and presence that is essential to portraying such a character. He also started his audition by asking questions and he hasn't stopped since, which we love. David performed in Poland in 1971 with a theater group from Boston, when the tragic memory of World War Two, and the Uprising in particular, were much fresher in the minds of the public, and we will definitely take advantage of that knowledge and experience.

Why We Act

We're still recovering after a very active weekend of casting, with two days of auditions for Starling. As food for thought, we'll have some meditations on that and more info on the show coming up soon, but in the mean time, we went to the source and asked some actor friends of ours why they put themselves through the potential rejection of auditions, the strenuous time commitments, and all the other hard work that goes into acting. In short, why do they do it and why do they keep at it?

Katherine Kuntz

I act because it keeps me active. Every time I do some form of acting, something is always a little different every time--no matter how many times you rehearse it. It forces you to adapt and change in a space where not always succeeding is not only acceptable--it's encouraged. It's fun and you meet people whom you would never have met otherwise.

Tiffani Pike Schmidt

When I was 9 years old I wrote a story about a girl who wrote stories. She would go hide inside of the worlds she made. She would pretend to be whoever she wanted there and whenever she got into trouble she would just pretend to be someone else. My favorite uncle was a historian at a museum in Washington State, and the History channel was making a documentary on the Oregon Trail and using the museum as a shooting location. The child actor they had needed to be replaced. My uncle recalled my storytelling and insisted I audition. I got the part.

I act to connect dots and to connect with people. I want to be heard and believed. I often find this difficult in my own life. The offer to put on someone else’s skin and jump into a story is absolutely provocative and irresistible. Moreover, when stepping onto the stage and feeling the energy between me and the other players, there is a gratification that comes from balancing that energy, much like the arm of a record player moving along the grooves of an LP. I continue acting because I can’t see where my own story begins and ends. Jumping into someone else’s skin and walking around in a new world with clarity, determination and purpose, that is an experience worth repeating.


Andi Norris

I started acting when I was five in the local children's theater and I knew from the first rehearsal that this was what I wanted to do with my life. At the time, it was primarily the attention, the feeling of acceptance, the thrill of the performance and probably also the flowers and milkshakes afterward that got me. What's kept me is the connection between people: the bonding of cast and crew; the challenge, acceptance and ultimately the cathartic embrace of the audience; the stories told for years later, rehashing memories, emotions, thoughts.

I always joke that I'm an actor because there were too many careers I wanted to do and this way I have an opportunity to try them all, and that's certainly part of it. But ultimately it's because of the connectivity.


Jason Hay

Acting is life. It would be difficult to provide a more dramatic answer to the question, “Why do
you act?” than that, but ever since I walked through the doors of a little community theatre in Coos Bay, Oregon, in early 1997, it really has been true for me. The funny thing is, I had never acted in anything before that, no plays, no classes, no training, and I entered the theatre in response to the audition notice for The Dining Room they had posted in the window. I remember feeling rather whimsical when I introduced myself and asked what an audition might entail and if I might try it. The director had me read the sides, and before I really knew what was happening, he offered me a role in the play. Actually, he offered me six. I know – deep end, right? Somehow, I found myself accepting the roles, and…I really don’t recall anything else that happened that day. I think, though, that perhaps that’s the reason I still do it. As we travel through this existence, we slip into a role and a routine, often playing it safe, attempting to structure and plan each facet of the days and days we make the same. Acting is different. It is a place where anything can happen, where we have the opportunity to bring forth something terribly beautiful from inside ourselves, to populate the mirror, and to share it with others. In the best theatre there’s this collaborative explosion in which all the joy, the pain, the love, the rage, the everything, rains…sprays...splatters onto an ephemeral world-canvas. And to be a part of that is…well… Acting is life.


Amberlee Williams

I originally decided to pursue acting because whenever I was working on a character, in rehearsals, in a class, or in a show, I was happy. Ultimately, I decided that I wanted to pursue what made me feel happy and fulfilled in life, and that let me to acting. I act because I want to be a part of something much bigger than myself. I want to tell stories that can hold the power to relay messages to audience members. I also love being a part of a world that allows people to transport themselves to a new place. They can allow themselves to scoff, to cry, to gasp, to laugh, to love, without the conventional pressures of keeping it together. They can truly respond and react in the moment, they can feel. They allow themselves to believe in anything, to believe that anything can happen, even for just two and a half hours.

I'm not sure exactly when it happens, but at some point children stop letting their imaginations run wild and become these people called grown-ups. I want to inspire these grown-ups to start believing again and inspire those children to never stop.

I'm also in it for the laughter. Nothing feels as good as making a room full of people laugh. Infinite wisdom? All-mighty strength? Invisibility cloaks? All the beauty in the world? None of them will ever be as powerful as the sound of laughter. When they asked me in grade school what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said, "funny." I don't know if I'm completely grown up yet or not (when exactly does that happen?), but I think I still have a chance of becoming funny.

As for why I still do it? I feel like you're asking me why I love my husband on his bad days or while he's going through something difficult: Because I love him and I always will. (Admittedly I don't have a husband, but I feel like this analogy can still work). I still act because I still love it, even on the bad days or even when I feel like I'm really struggling. I can't imagine doing anything else with my life. It's a rollercoaster trip of a life, and you have to embrace the moments you're on top of the world and the moments where you're at the bottom struggling to pull through. My favorite acting professor told me, "Embrace the struggle. It is beautiful. It lets you know that you're alive."

I have some empowering days where I think, "This is awesome, I am called to be an actor!" and then some days where I go home, cry, pull out my hair, curse the day I chose such a challenging lifestyle, and then eat a bunch of chocolate...Ok, you got me. I eat the chocolate on the good days too


Sofia Rybin

I act, because when theatre works, when film works, when art works, it expands our idea of what it means to be human. It makes us more compassionate. It grows our minds to imagine lives and worlds in which we are merely visitors - and it makes those places real for us. And suddenly we are not all so different. There is no such concept as race, sex, social or economic background, faith, or even imagination, that cannot be transcended and translated through good art. So I persevere in the undying quest, as I shall until I am no more. Because we always have something more to learn about ourselves as a species and as a force in this world. Because we are much more than we imagine ourselves to be, and because the quest can be endless. We are not looking for answers, but rather, for feelings and yearnings. Art is a job for the soul, not just the mind. It is harder to grow, but more rewarding.

Getting the Ball Rolling

We've had plenty of unofficial meetings for Starling, considering that Confrontational has been committed to doing the play since March of last year. But last week marked our first official pre-production meeting, and the week we posted our audition notice and so things are really real now.

Accordingly, this morning was the first time I started doing math on rehearsals: Auditions are the beginning of March, if callbacks are the week after, then we won't have a cast until almost halfway through the month, and then we'll have to run all the logistics of getting five different actors (plus staff) to rehearsals, location, time, etc, and then I have to remind myself that we still have more than three months and this is no time to panic.

Posting auditions is one of my favorite parts of the process of mounting a show, just because there's a huge satisfaction in finding an inbox full of people who are interested in auditioning. Among those are people who specifically like the subject matter, or a play we've done before, or even (for this show, anyway) actors who are still in high school and looking for people to take them seriously. It's very gratifying.

Our meeting started with one of our playwrights and I sitting down with Ahren Buhmann. We're thrilled to be working with him again (Ahren designed the set and consulted on lighting for Proof). He's the production designer for Balagan and does a number of iconic, awesome sets every year. That means he also has a lot of materials to draw on from previous shows, and it turns out that he has lots of stuff already that will help us build a Warsaw cellar. Ahren did Proof as a favor, coming in and building the set literally overnight, and this time things are much more official in that we have a budget and more space and specific needs, and we're really excited to see what he does.

We're doing Starling at theLab@INScape, which we're also thrilled about. They've only been in the space a year, but their first show started with them shipping in dirt and building hills, so they like different, they like interactive, and they like ambitious, which is rad. They recently had a write-up in Seattle Weekly by John Longenbaugh, and if you want to hear more about what they're up to, including what their next show is, you should definitely read the article. We love John, as well, he's a remarkable writer and director who has had some wonderful success in the last year with the publication of both Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Carol and his anthology show Arcana.

We're still casting about for some other technical folks, but things are starting to fall into place, and we'll let you know about the other awesome people we get lined up in future blog entries.