Barrie Cole
The monologues in this production were written by Barrie Cole—an actor and playwright based in Chicago. She has written many critically acclaimed plays including Hello Neighbor, Fruit Tree Backpack, and Elevator Tours and much of her work has been performed nationally. She also teaches Story and Image at Columbia College. Dramaturgy intern Kierstin Jones (’21) had a wonderful phone conversation with Cole to talk about her journey as a playwright and her inspiration to write these monologues.
Jones: How has your writing evolved since your first plays?
Cole: “What inspires me the most is language. Whether I’m writing plays, essays, stories, or hybrid pieces, language is my biggest influence. I majored in theatre, and at first I thought I wanted to act, but quickly I realized I liked writing more. It’s hard for me to memorize and it seemed like it would be way more exciting to be the one deciding what actors would say. My acting experience has helped me find out what actors think and how they work and what might be juicy for them to explore.
I wrote my first two plays as a college student and then the first year after I graduated. Then I moved to Chicago to go to grad school and got a degree in interdisciplinary arts. I didn’t really know anyone, so started to do more solo performance work. I started writing plays again once I found more of a community. I have always felt like you don’t need much to make theatre. A lot of people during this time are freaked out…[but] because my work has always been about language, it lends itself to Zoom very well. Some of my work is fine to even listen to as “radio theatre.” So that’s my process.
I love writing plays where the characters can be played by people of any age, sexual preference, or race. I don’t write a lot of plays where this person has to be 25, blonde, and white. I like writing where a lot of different actors can play the same role.”
Jones: Tell me about the inspiration for these plays we are using in Love and Imagination.
Cole: “When I wrote these, I was riding the train in Chicago quite a bit. I love language and it’s fun to eavesdrop on conversations that I heard on the train. And I was always disappointed. It was just like “I’m going to pick up ‘X’ at Target.” You know, it was never very juicy. So, I thought, “What if I wrote what I wished I could hear?” So, I wrote these monologues about things that you probably would never hear in real life. Then we performed the monologues on the train, working with a director and a variety of actors, kids, and adults as performers.
We did a lot of experiments in 2014. We started with 15-20 monologues and now we have about 30-35. I would love to have these done in different parts of the country and world. Because people are so married to their cell phones, I thought cell phones could bring people together via theatre. What the characters are saying is so compelling they would cause people on the train to stop looking at their cell phones and pay attention. And I wasn’t trying to fool people. People didn’t think it was real. We then adapted the monologues to an actual play, but still made it about the train. The audience was onstage with the actors, so when the audience came in they didn’t know who the actors were or who would be doing a monologue right next to them.
We did another show in Wisconsin that was really fun. We decided to do it on Zoom in May and that was when (our director) Jan got a chance to see it, so the audience came and still didn’t know who would be doing the monologue. They could pin the person speaking or watch everyone respond and see the speaker at the same time or toggle back and forth. So that’s how it went. I thought, “if we’re doing this now, we have to write some new monologues to address COVID. It’s fun that it’s going further and being produced by you guys.”
Jones: That’s really neat. I can see how your love of language plays out in these pieces. OMG BFF, for example, uses words and abbreviations that most people say is kind of a distortion of language, but you actually use things like “LOL” and “OMG” to convey a heartfelt message.
Cole: “Yeah, in OMG BFF, I always feel sorry for the actor because it’s hard to memorize! The thing I worry about most when I’m not there is that actors will make this realism. It’s not realism. It’s a comment on reality through the monologues. I worry that the actors will put in too many pauses to wait for the other person that they’re talking to. Sometimes they can, but because the audience knows how phone calls work, we don’t really need that. The language in the monologues say something but also point to what’s still beautiful about the world, what are things in the world that we miss, the deeper feelings we all have that we wish we could communicate but have trouble doing, and our love and imagination. Some of them are formal, but they are really just thinking out loud in a way that is condensed and thoughtful. I hope that they’re hopeful. There’s so much worry and fear about the future. I hope that the monologues remind people of our humanity and that they provide some hope.”
Jones: I definitely think that these plays are hopeful. This time has been scary for all of us and I think that when people come to see the show, maybe they will be hearing their inner thoughts and fears out loud and think “Okay. I’m not crazy. I’m not the only one who feels this way.” And especially considering how isolated we are now, maybe they’ll leave feeling a little less alone.
Cole: I thought for a long time that unfortunately so much contemporary theatre seems to show the audience what’s wrong in the world. What’s funny about that is that theatregoers already know what wrong with the world. Theatre that shows the audience new ways to respond to what’s wrong and also what‘s right—even though the characters may have crazy ideas about how to fix things—shows that at least they’re trying. I want to highlight the human capacity to use our imaginations to come together in conversation to highlight what’s possible and not just what’s wrong. All my work is about trying to move towards what’s right and to find those possibilities.”
David Ives
David Ives has been a writer and playwright all his life; he wrote his first play at the age of nine in Catholic seminary. After studying English at Northwestern University and receiving an M.F.A from the Yale School of Drama, he began his playwrighting career with gusto. While Ives has written many full-length plays including titles such as Canvas, The Lives and Deaths of the Great Harry Houdini, and Polish Joke, he is best known for his short, comical one-acts. He wrote the first volume All in the Timing in 1994 and his second, Mere Mortals, in 1997. Both saw long runs Off-Broadway. His work is popular in many countries and has been translated into Brazilian, French, and Italian.
