Austinist Interviews: LIDLESS Playwright Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig

I'm assuming that you don't have a lot of firsthand experience of torture.... How did you prepare yourself as a playwright to evoke Guantanamo interrogations, both play-by-play and as they are experienced internally by the detainee character?

I did a lot of research. I read poems and memoirs written by detainees, watched films and read plays about reunions between torturers in their victims (i.e. The Night Porter, Death and The Maiden), I interviewed a former U.S. Army Medic who served in detention centers in Iraq. He gave me a red-orange jumpsuit from the prison, as well as his army clothes to use in the play, and sometimes I would wear the jumpsuit or army gear while writing, and let that inform how I moved and felt and wrote. Since sensory deprivation is such a big part of the experience of being detained, I tried writing hooded, with ear plugs, etc, to see what that did to my language and expression. I went to acupuncture every week to kind of reset my spirit, and make sure the anxiety and tension and terror that I sometimes had to inhabit in writing wasn't something I would carry over into other parts of my life.

I know you're a playwright who likes to give actors a role in developing the play. How has LIDLESS changed since you started working with this cast?

I tried to pay attention to where they were struggling to find meaning, motivation, intention, as that was usually a problem with my writing. Specificity was a huge problem up front, and seeing how much the actors were struggling with their characters put a lot of good pressure on me to make some big decisions about characters that really activated the play.

Word is that Obama is shutting down Gitmo but hasn't yet decided where to send the detainees. As a playwright, what do you think he should do with them?

I am currently in a class with Coleman Jennings about Theatre for Youth and Creative Dramatics. I was really struck by a reading we had recently by Winifred Ward, who wrote that one of the goals of Creative Drama for young people is to give them opportunities to grow in understanding people who have a different viewpoint from themselves. I think Obama should change Guantanamo into a Creative Dramatics Center and get the people involved in its creation and daily life, from politicians and military police to defense contractors and the press and detainees to re-enact what happened there from a different perspective. Maybe invite tourists to come and watch too, like a Renaissance Fair.

Any idea where LIDLESS is headed next after this run at the LAB?

In my ideal world I would get thoughtful, provocative responses from the audience and invited respondents, spend six months or so going deeper into character, scene, and research, and then share it with the world. Realistically, I don't know. I read an article in the New York Times recently about how hard it is to get audiences to come see war plays. I hope this isn't true. On the positive side, the play is one of thirteen finalists for the Yale Emerging Playwrights Prize (David Hare will read the thirteen plays and select the winner), and a semi-finalist for the Eugene O'Neill National Playwright's Conference [but there are 150 semi-finalists]. Right now the only given is that I will work my ass off to give this play the energy and life it deserves, and then see what happens.

I know you have a few projects going up in town this year.... Anything else you'd like to plug for our audience?

Yes! Two years ago I invited some classmates from the Dell'Arte School of Physical Theatre to come live in Austin for three months during my final semester of my MFA work at the Michener Center and make a play with me. They are here now, living with me. I commissioned Kate Braidwood, another graduate of the Dell'Arte School who is based in Humboldt and an amazing mask maker, to create six larval masks (a pre-character, embryonic creature that is a proposal of Lecoq, adapted from carnival of Basel masks), and now we are going to make a one hour play for larval masks that explores their capacity for violence and whimsy and naivete and despair. All without words, I think. We will be collaborating with musical duo The Just Desserts (Michael Shay and Lisa Shawley) to create a piece that will play three times only in and around a house in East Austin (at dawn, 2 pm, and 8 pm) March 21 and 22.