28 Jul F30 Countdown – Tom Mularz

In exactly seven days we’ll have the unique opportunity of seeing thirty incredible short plays and musicals live and on their feet. Have you bought your tickets, yet? 

For today’s countdown say hello to Tom Mularz!

Tom Mularz has written for the television shows, CSI, Game of Silence, and Notorious. He lives outside of Los Angeles with his wife and three sons.

When did you start writing plays? If you had a moment where you realized you wanted to write, what was it?

I wrote some short plays in high school, along with attempts at screenplays and television scripts – all generated from a word processor with a tiny LCD screen that would show one line at a time. I won the 5th grade “Young Authors” Contest at my school, and the prize was meeting an author, named Berniece Rabe, at our public library in Crystal Lake, Illinois – I still have the book she gave me, and that experience stuck with me.

How did you come to write your OOB play? Was there a particular inspiration behind its creation? How has it developed?

After the birth of our twin sons, my wife and I met a purported “parenting expert” who was a bit of a nightmare. I wondered what it must be like to be her child, the lab rat of her theories… and then the idea twisted from there.   

What are 5 words that describe who you are as a playwright?

Hopefully Entertaining, Open To Suggestions.

What/who are some of the major influences on your writing?

I’ve been lucky enough to work as a television writer for the last nine years, and that has taught me to adapt to different voices or styles of storytelling, and to seek out a personal connection to whatever I’m writing. As a writer on a television staff, you might be asked to develop and write a story that is entirely foreign to your own life – I’ve never hunted a serial killer or argued a case in court – but to make it work, you have to find some deeper element in the story that speaks to your personal experiences. That holds true for playwriting as well.   

What’s one fact someone would never guess about you?

My great-great-great-great Grandfather, James “King of the Waupecan” Moran claimed to be the oldest man in America at the time of his death in the early 1900s.

What are some of your favorite plays?

Adam Rapp’s Nocturne, Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s The Mystery Plays. 

Any new projects you’re working on or shameless plugs?

Nothing at the moment!

His play Latch will be performed on August 11th at 8:30pm, where we will meet a young man who grapples with a mother of an issue.