OOB Final 30 Countdown – Lindsay Joy

We are now past the halfway point as we enter the sixteenth day of our Final 30 countdown. (The festival’s so close!) Let’s welcome Lindsay Joy!

Lindsay grew up in the middle of nowhere New Hampshire. She’s a proud member of the Amoralists Wright Club, and the all-lady ass-kicking Beehive Collective. She recently served as Co-Artistic Director to the Award Winning LabRats Theater Company. The Rats production my full length play, The Rise and Fall of a Teenage Cyberqueen, garnered two NYIT awards Including “Outstanding Premiere Production of a Play” and “Outstanding Director”. Last year, The Farm Theater commissioned me to write and collaborate with three colleges over the course of 2014/2015, the resulting play, In the Event of my Death was produced at Ashland University, Centre College, and Clark University. In the Event of my Death is slated for its New York premiere in August of 2016, produced by Stable Cable Theater Company. Vertigo Theater Company’s Bareknuckle (a sight specific evening set in Dumbo’s famed Gleason’s Boxing Gym) featured her script Clinch. She loves the Red Sox and coffee.

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

I started writing plays in college. I had a terrific teacher named David Kaye that encouraged me to broaden myself as a theater artist (I considered myself more of an actor at the time). The first assignment was a ten minute, and that play landed me at the KC-ACTF festival in D.C. I remember rehearsing in the bowels of the Kennedy Center, and realizing it was more thrilling to be on that side of the process.

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

I had read a story in the Times about a guy that owned a crime scene clean-up business, and thought he’d make a good character and I wanted to capture the feeling of my first neighborhood in the city- Loisaida. Those two things collided together for this lil’ nugget. The piece has developed into a full length play that I’m so proud of, but this was the first thing I wrote. I was obsessed with the idea of finding something beautiful in horrific circumstances.

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

Visceral. Vulnerable. Clever. Human. Caffeinated.

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

Paula Vogel, Martin Mcdonagh, Conor Mcpherson, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Lucy Prebble are playwrights that really get me excited. There’s this storyteller named Daniel Kitson, and the way he gets to the heart of an emotional journey is so inspirational.

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

I grew up in a home with forty cats. My mom was a cat breeder…you cannot make this shit up.

6. What are some of your favorite plays?

The Effect, How I Learned to Drive, The Pillowman, Our Lady of 121st Street, Cloud 9, August: Osage County, In the Next RoomUgly Lies the Bone, Clown Bar, The Seafarer, Crane Story…I could go on and on!

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

My play In the Event of my Death is up at IRT this month, directed by Padraic Lillis and produced by Stable cable Theater Company. I’m also finishing a ghost play set in coastal Maine.

 

Her play The Cleaners will be performed on August 9th at 8:30pm. It’s set in Lower East Side. Right now. It’s Rita and Jerry’s job to clean up the stuff no one else will: death.