Interview: Playwright Deb Margolin Discusses 8 STOPS & the Joy of Solo Performances

Deb Margolin - the acclaimed playwright / performance artist and Obie winner for "Sustained Excellence" - will introduce New York audiences to her new solo play "8 Stops" at the Cherry Lane Theatre April 16 to 26.

Called "a sparkling downtown wit" by The New York Times, Deb is one of the pioneers of the current renaissance of solo theater in New York and around the country. "8 Stops" - a comedy about life, death, humor and spirituality - is intensely funny even though it deals with a woman's battle with cancer. She wrote the play, in her own words, to utilize "the power of theater to bring relief."

Margolin chatted with BroadwayWorld about the inspiration for "8 Stops," the advice she gives to her students, and how her children inspired her to write two other plays.

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How does it feel to be bringing 8 STOPS to New York at the Cherry Lane Theatre?

I am absolutely thrilled! Cherry Lane is a theater that I have loved for a long time. I came to consciousness as an artist in New York City, and every time I am up in New York, I'm thrilled, especially in this historic theater. I find it really beautiful; it's both large and intimate at once. I'm absolutely over the moon and happy about it.

Have you performed there before?

I haven't. I've always wanted to.

Can you describe 8 STOPS in 8 words?

It's comedy concerning the grief of endless compassion.

Perfect! What inspired you to create 8 STOPS? What was the process like?

You know, I use theater as a way of stopping to look at, and inviting an audience to stop and look with me, at what I find to be the most profound aspects of human experience. When you perform in front of an audience, you have the honor of inviting them to hold with you the certain images, thoughts and experiences, and it's a privilege I never get over. I say what I don't want to die without having talked about.

I was invited in December 2013 to come down to the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia; it's a beautiful arts center. It's kind of like what Lincoln Center is to New York. The artistic director there, Jay Wahl, invited me to come be part of a writing residency led by Dael Orlandersmith, a very esteemed monologist and Pulitzer prize finalist, who I've admired for a long time. Under her auspicious, it was a writing residency and some wonderful writers were invited, it was a great honor. And we were paid to sit in a room and work and write. We were all working on different material, and we would meet in the morning and the evening and work. Dael challenged us to invade our own privacy; you don't need to twist my arm to get me to do that. And where I found myself going was a place where "8 Stops" emanates from.

The "8 Stops" monologue came from when I was down in Philly and went a Philadelphia 76ers basketball game. No middle-aged Jewish lady goes to a basketball game alone, it was kind of an anomaly; nobody went to see the 76ers that season because they lost every game they played anyway. So after the game there was a subway near there and I met a little boy on the subway. I got him to talk, he was 7-years-old and it was quite clear that he was Scottish; he had come with his father who had brought them to the United States and his mother wasn't with them and they were living with his father's girlfriend and they were planning to get married, and this kid was in a bad situation. His mother was gone, his motherland was gone, and I realized that I had eight stops to raise this kid. Eight stops to let this kid know that he was loved, and lovely, and beautiful and his mother and his motherland were within him, that he should forget me immediately but I would never forget him, and that his beauty was enough. And I had eight stops to get that done.

"8 Stops" is a show about motherhood, about joy, about illness, about daily experience. And that's what it's about.

Wow!

I had a stem-cell transplant for lymphoma while I was raising kids. And we found ways of laughing and life kept going. It's about the grief of endless compassion, which my son has and my father has.

That's very inspiring! What is your character personally going through at these eight stops? I know you mentioned the little boy, but what is your character feeling?

So many different things: joy, comedy, grief, fear, tenderness, guilt, and all these feelings. Over the course of our life it's an arc in someone's life, it's an arc in my life. It's very personal, this material. It's not just the way I would talk to someone at a coffee shop; there's a great difference between the way we speak about our personal experience on stage and performance, and the way we speak about it when we're casually speaking. I offer, any perform offers, her or his experiences as a sort of example of all human experience. So my character is feeling so many different things. The show is challenging because it turns on a dime emotionally. There are so many different feelings, and it changes very quickly.

Is there a particular moment in the show that you love?

There are so many moments I love! I love the music, every time the music comes on. Music just, you know, if I was a better musician, I would have done that. Music is just, not analog, music is right in the wit.

I love all the comic moments, I love making people laugh; it just gives me joy. When people laugh, you have to laugh! I think comedy is critical, I think comedy is an organic life force. Babies laugh in their cribs, it's abnormal not to find things funny.

I definitely agree with that!

People say comedy is so hard. It isn't hard! Avoiding comedy is hard!

Agreed!

[Laughs] Thank you!

You have to laugh at everything, no matter what happens!

Yes, you have to! Everything's ridiculous when you consider the fact we're going to die, it's all so ridiculous. The whole thing.

What is it about solo performances that you enjoy?

Solo performance is to the stage what the close up is to the film; you just go very deep. Writing a solo show enables me to speak about things that are very particular to my experiences and the very things in which I am passionate. I have been a resident writer in a theatre company and my job was to raise the ideas of everybody. And that was both illuminating and a great honor. But, writing solo shows, writing for myself, enables me to particularize my voice and those things I am most passionate about.

It's also easy to rehearse! You can do it in the bathroom, living room, in front of a cat! It's the ascendance of the individual spirit that makes me love it so much and I why I love performing solo. I also love ensemble work, this is just a subset of theatre that I find extremely exciting.

Very exciting! It is also mentioned that you are a professor a Yale University. What is one piece of advice you always give to your students?

I advise them to pursue a theatre of desire; a theatre where you are walking from passion. You know, theatre can be very weird and very difficult, but when you're passionate about what you are doing in the theatre, or any endeavor, it will get you. Desire has power in agency. I recommend a theatre of desire. I recommend a theatre that we do, not because we are paid tons of money and given a chauffeur-driven limousine, a theatre we do because we can't die without having done it. That's my primary advice. Desire is your best editor in terms of what material you choose. What gives you joy? What must you say? What must you work on? I commend people to their deepest impulses.

That's very inspiring and definitely great advice for students, or anyone. Besides 8 STOPS, do you have a favorite show you've created? And why is it your favorite?

Well, I have very tender feelings towards my show, "Three Seconds in the Key" which is a play I wrote for my son. I wrote it because I promised my son I would write it when I was first diagnosed with lymphoma. And I couldn't play basketball with my little boy, and all he wanted to do was play basketball. I always lost because he was the referee. [Laughs] It didn't matter that I was twice his height; he was the referee so everything I did was a foul and everything his did was ok. When I got lymphoma I could not play basketball, and he was too young to play really serious basketball. So we ended up watching Knicks games all the time. He educated me about basketball and I became an extreme basketball fan during that period. I felt like these men were helping me raise my child. I promised him I would make theatre about that period in our lives when we couldn't play basketball, but we sat together and watched it. And everyday he'd come home from the third grade and he'd say "Mom have you written the play? Have you written it?" And finally I did! And the play was called "Three Seconds in the Key." It was about a mother and son who sat huddled together, the mother had lymphoma and the son was a little boy, and they watched these games together. And the little room where they watched was in the middle of Madison Square Garden with the New York Knicks playing around them, and one day one of the players from the team comes out of the T.V. and into the mother's life. And these two people heal each other. It's about the love of a mother for a child, about basketball, about strength and resilience. And my son and I got that show up at PS 122 and played mother and son and then the play went on to have its own life with other mothers and sons and basketball players in it.

I was an artist in residence at NYU and I developed the show with students there as well as with the NYU women's basketball team, and it was a tremendous experience. For my son and me it was foundational.

That's really cool! How did it feel being up there with him performing the show?

It was amazing! By then I was feeling pretty well and he was doing amazing work. I watched him learn to get a laugh line, and learn theatre. He's now directing for theatre; he lives in New Orleans and adapts and directs lots of different stuff.

Then I wrote a play for my daughter about a month or so ago at New Dramatist called "What Difference Does it Make?" My daughter wanted to play one of the characters from her childhood; of course I've played all these characters. So my daughter wanted me to write a play this character and I did! And now my son is going to direct it and she's going to be in it this summer. I've written them each a play!

Wow! That's so special and something they'll always remember!

Yup! We're all writers and theatre people, except for my husband. He's a computer security specialist, and we all laugh about how it's going to be when we force him in one of our shows!

I'm sure that will be very funny!

Yes, it will be most amusing!

That's all of the questions I have for you today. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Nope, you've got it all! I would just love to have people come and share it with me!

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8 STOPS is Obie Award winner Deb Margolin's thought-provoking and comedic new solo work which recently made its world premiere at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. It's about death, the private lives of animals, the suburbs, the spiritual exurbs, illness, desire, and a subway ride with a motherless child who Deb realizes she has only 8 stops to raise! Isn't that all the time we ever really have...8 Stops? Developed as part of writing residency with celebrated poet and performance artist Dael Orlandersmith at the Kimmel Center, this rousing world-premiere work will leave you with classical questions about the nature of compassion and the limits, and the limitlessness, of human endurance. 8 STOPS is directed by Jay Wahl, Artistic Director of the Kimmel Center.

8 STOPS will be performed Thursday, April 16 - Saturday, April 18 at 8:00 PM; Sunday, April 19 at 3:00 PM; Tuesday, April 21 at 8:00 PM; Friday, April 24 at 8:00 PM; Saturday, April 25 at 2:00 PM and Sunday, April 26 at 8:00 PM. Tickets start at $59 and may be purchased at www.allforonetheater.org/tickets or by phoning OvationTix at (866) 811-4111.

Photo credit: Alexander Iziliaev

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