Jordan Harrison is one of the playwrights of the new theatrical event Standing On Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays. which begins previews at the Minetta Lane Theatre (18 Minetta Lane) on Monday, November 7 with an official opening night set for Sunday, November 13.
Jordan Harrison is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, a Theater Masters’ Innovative Playwright Award, the Kesselring Fellowship, the Heideman Award, Jerome and McKnight Fellowships from The Playwrights’ Center, and a NEA/TCG Playwright-in-Residence Grant. Jordan is currently working on commissions for Ars Nova, Playwrights Horizons, and South Coast Repertory. A graduate of the Brown MFA program, he is an alumnus of New Dramatists.
Jordan Harrison’s play Maple and Vine recently premiered in the 2011 Humana Festival, and will be produced this season at Playwrights Horizons in New York, A.C.T. in San Francisco, and Next Theatre in Chicago. Jordan’s other plays include Doris to Darlene (Playwrights Horizons), Futura (Portland Center Stage), Amazons and Their Men (Clubbed Thumb), Act a Lady (2006 Humana Festival), Finn in the Underworld (Berkeley Repertory Theatre), Kid-Simple (2004 Humana Festival, SPF), The Flea and the Professor (Arden Theatre Company) and The Museum Play (Washington Ensemble Theatre).
In this exclusive Queer ME Up interview talented playwright Jordan Harrison talks about the inspiration and the writing process behind “The Revision” the play he wrote for Standing On Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays.
What was your inspiration for your play “The Revision”?
My partner got ordained as a minister online (I think all he had to do was fill out a form) and he’s done the wedding ceremony for several of our closest friends. He always puts so much care into writing the ceremony with the bride and groom (the bride and bride, in one case). So I’ve been close to that angsty process of choosing what to promise to one another in front of a couple hundred people. “The Revision” begins with a gay couple revising their wedding vows – and one of them is suggesting rather absurd revisions, to do with the compromises that gay couples are asked to accept in so many states. So, in a kind of slanty way, the play discusses why we can’t settle for anything less than marriage, why civil unions and domestic partnerships are innately unequal.
How did the play go from inception to production?
The play has had this whole long life without me around. Standing on Ceremony was originally conceived by an L.A. director, Brian Schnipper, in response to Prop 8 passing. It was initially a one-night benefit for the Human Rights Campaign, I believe. And then it started to gather steam, with several more benefit readings, acquiring some pretty starry names in the process – and now Joan Stein has brought it to New York. So I never imagined that it would be performed more than once, let alone that it would have a run in New York, and that I’d get to share the bill with all these gay writers I grew up reading, like Paul Rudnick, Doug Wright, and Moises Kaufman.
What kind of feedback are you looking for from the audience who attends the show?
I hope that they laugh!
Tell us a little bit about your personal connection to the play. How autobiographical is it?
Strangely it feels more personal to me now that marriage equality has passed in New York. Now that we have the option, my partner and I are talking for the first time about whether that’s in the future for us. Everyone asks us if we’re getting married, but it’s not like every gay couple rushes straight to City Hall. For us, and for a few gay couples I know, it’s a longer discussion – the conversation has changed now that it’s a possibility.
What was the most challenging part of writing “The Revision”?
The play came pretty effortlessly. The hardest part has probably been going back and revising it, to set the play specifically in a state where there isn’t marriage equality yet (now that it’ll be running for the first time in a state where gay couples can get married). It’s a very good problem to have.
Tell us about your writing process. (How do you write? When do you write? What gets you writing?)
I write when I have a deadline – that seems to be the only thing that works anymore. I turn on all the lights, I make coffee, I play Bach or jazz. I turn off the internet – there’s this program called Freedom, which blocks the internet on your computer. It seems a little perverse, paying money to not have internet service. But I’m fatally distractable. It’s a little like a dieter chaining the refrigerator door.
What is the most rewarding for you about this play?
I obviously hope to make plays that engage with what’s going on in the world. But it’s a slow medium: plays often take a good three years from conception to production. If the goal is to enact social change, it would be much quicker to make a sign and go stand outside the Capitol building. Plays tend to be better at looking, in a nuanced way, at something that happened ten years ago. So Standing on Ceremony is an unusual opportunity to be right in the middle of social change taking place – to be aligned with an important activist organization like Freedom To Marry.
If there is one thing you want audiences to walk away knowing or thinking about after enjoying Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays, what would that be?
The fight isn’t over! There are so many states that still don’t have what we have in New York.
Standing On Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays will have simultaneous performances planned at theatres across the country and around the world for one night only on november 7. Previews November 7 at 8:00 pm at Minetta lane theatre. The event will raise money for local, state and national marriage equality organizations.
For more information about participating theatres and how to see Standing On Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays on November 7 in your state, visit the show’s Facebook site at http://on.fb.me/standingonceremony. Ticket prices vary depending on location and theatre.
