Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder - Interviews at the Royal Court Theatre

Fresh Kills was one of the successful new plays put on by the Royal Court this autumn. Mel Cooper met the extraordinary and very young writer who is responsible for it.

29 November 2004

The third evening and fourth play in the latest Royal Court season of new plays by young writers developed by the Royal Court Young Writers Programme was written by American Elyzabeth Gregory-Wilder. The play, Fresh Kills, has an interesting history and, in the current climate in the States, was even considered a bit of a shocker when it was given a reading. As the blurb says:

"Eddie's restless, his wife is anxious for him to finish their new kitchen cabinets. Since he discovered Arnold a teenaged lad online, he's become distracted. And when Eddie and Arnold meet, it's soon clear that Arnold's interest in Eddie goes beyond their night-time encounters."

Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder has been working as a writers' assistant for CBS television. She is also a member of Youngblood, the Ensemble Studio Theatre's programme for writers under 30. This play is her professional debut in London and she met with me in the basement restaurant of the Royal Court Theatre before one of the performances. She is blonde and wholesome-looking and could easily play the Reese Witherspoon roles and personae in films. She looks indeterminately late-teens or early-twenties. You want to protect her from the buffets of life and preserve that marvellous sheen of energy and enthusiasm. But as we talk, it becomes clear that none of what she appears to be is incompatible with also being ambitious and focused and wise about her career.

Born and raised in Mobile, Alabama, one of the heartlands of Bush supporters and religious conservatism, Elyzabeth moved to New York as soon as she graduated from High School.

"I graduated a year and a half early and my mom is always good at her promises, so she let me go to New York right away. I took a year off, though - the year that would have been my senior year of high school. I spent it working and I did a horrible little play in NY as an actress - but that got me my Equity card."

Elyzabeth set out to be an actress. That first play ran about 12 performances and was about the Tennessee Valley Authority. She has no regrets. "It was a great experience. The title was: And the Tide Shall Cover the Earth. I was sort of taken under the wing of Roger McFarland who was then the executive director of Broadway Care and really just thrust into the middle of the NY theatre community. It was just what I needed. And being surrounded by that world, it was basically that year that I started writing plays."

I was curious about why she should feel compelled to do that.

"To tell you the truth, writing was not a new thing. I had been writing little sketches and monologues and things for myself from an early age. It's always hard to find good material for young actors, so I would write my own stuff for auditions and things like that. And I went to see the Young Writers Project at the Public theatre. Being slightly competitive in nature, I found myself thinking: Well, if they can do it, so can I. I remember going up to Wendy Wassterstein who was there as a guest speaker afterwards and spewing forth all of the new-found insight I had into the world. And she said, you know, you should go home and write a play. And I did.

"That play ended up produced as a reading at the Blackjack Festival of New Plays when I was 17, and then it was given a showcase production in New York and it was optioned as a film - which of course, was never made. It has all been a fabulous experience. My time in New York was filled with wonderful adventures and so many wonderful people that it would take me hours to fill you in."

I found out that Elyzabeth has just graduated from New York University in May, 2004. She decided to go to Los Angeles on a job-seeking mission because there is so much more work for writers out there.

Fairly quickly she got hired to work on a new show for CBS called Club House - which had literally been cancelled the day before we met despite positive critical response. Laughing, Elyzabeth glossed: "I am now officially unemployed, so let's hope the play does well. I would love to find a job at the BBC. I'm really impressed with TV over here." (Elyzabeth was  commissioned to write another play a few days later).

Elyzabeth came to London for the first time a few weeks ago to attend the first rehearsals, but had to return to Los Angeles after six days because of her job. She had just returned two days before, and though she was jet-lagged she was delighted with the way the play had turned out in production. "I'm very happy with my cast here. I had to turn over my faith in the director, Wilson Milam, because I wasn't here for the casting process. We had a horrible time finding the young actor to play the boy; it's a really difficult and demanding role. They had to see more actors for that role than they have ever seen for any one role in the history of the Royal Court. They saw about 85 kids ranging in age from 14 to 28. You have to have someone that can suggest he is dangerous yet vulnerable and it was hard to find that combination. Also, because of the subject matter a lot of guys would come in and play the role very effeminate, very gay. And the director and I very much agreed that that quality wasn't necessary. The play isn't really about that. Also you don't have to be effeminate to be gay. For many actors the two are synonymous and that is the choice they come and make.

"In the end, we found this kid, Matt Smith, at the eleventh hour and he has risen to the occasion, he's really grown during rehearsals. He's had an amazing cast and to help guide him an amazing director. It's his first professional role. Also, Phil Daniels and Quadrophenia are his idols, so I felt the first day of rehearsal he was just absolutely beaming. To be able to make your professional debut with your hero is pretty amazing!"

Elyzabeth was contemplative for a moment, and then said, "It's been a very long road and I am very happy the play ended up here. This is definitely the right place to realize it."

I asked Elyzabeth to tell me some of the story of how the play came to be.

"It started with a ten minute play that I wrote in a workshop with José Rivera at the Free Theatre in New York three years ago. It was only about six weeks after 9/11 and we all got together for this workshop. He gave us an assignment to write a play that included the colour green, the sound of an animal, the texture of an orange, the taste of sugar free gum, and the definition of laughter. He sent us away for a week with this assignment. I'd already been writing for a while and most of my plays had been pretty well received in readings and things. But I was worried. I was feeling always tthat something was holding my work back and I wasn't taking enough risks. And I felt this is an opportunity to do that without making a huge investment.

"This story is loosely based on something that really happened which a friend of mine talked to me about. It had been in my head for a while and I had been afraid of it, but this was an opportunity to tackle it. So I did. And every time I would start to pull back I would push a little further. So I wrote this grizzly little play and no one knew what to do with it. It was so different from anything I had done.

"That ten minute play eventually, for the most part, became the second scene of the full play. So I sent the little ten minute play off here to the Royal Court - even in New York I had heard of the Young Writers project from another writer I knew. He had been selected and he just raved about the experience.

Elyzabeth created another draft of the play, sent it back, and half a year later, just before her graduation, she got a message on her voice mail from Ian Rickson, the artistic director of the Royal Court. He had loved the new version. Elyzabeth called him immediately and they arranged for a reading of the play in London.

"The day they did that reading I got my job in LA. And about three weeks later they called and said that they would produce my play. They hooked me up with Wilson to direct. The wonderful thing is that Wilson and I have been on the same page since day one. We had conversations about the play all throughout the summer; and they were really minor. We did it all by phone and emails. I did a revision, sent it back to him, and here we are.

"This is my first full-length professional production anywhere. I had a one-act play that was produced at the Ensemble Studio Theatre a couple of years ago - a great experience too; including the critics, casting dramas and all. But this is the first experience of this calibre. Everyone has been so generous and so giving and supportive of the project and supportive of me as a writer. This is rare. Everyone put so much work into making the show a success. This is definitely the first time I have had these production values."

The majority of the play takes place in a truck and Elyzabeth expected two chairs and a steering wheel. But to her amazement, they gave her a truck.

"The play is not blocked, it's choreographed. And Wilson makes it look so incredibly natural and he uses every inch of that truck. That first week of rehearsal that I was here for, we did nothing but table work; and that was a very good experience for me. Imagine, taking a week out to go through the play page by page, line by line. I discovered levels to the play I had never been conscious of before. And it was wonderful having such a smart group of actors - not just intelligent, but really smart; and they asked some amazing, smart questions all the way through.

It was a little frustrating at times - and I was terribly jet lagged through the entire process. But I left for LA feeling really confident about the play and confident that I was leaving it in good hands. And of course, I got back to New York and got this frantic email from Wilson that the last scene was not working - the last few beats of the play has still, up until the very end, been a struggle. But I think they have made it work."

Elyzabeth's mother had joined her in London to see the play and it took her two performances to start to get comfortable about it. "I guess," Elyzabeth said, "it must be hard to watch your child write about very sexual things. In the earlier drafts, I was afraid to make Eddie accountable. As the play grew, I think I made him more accountable for his actions. And the kid, Arnold, I mourn for him every time I read the play. I mourn for the fact that there are children in the world seeking compassion from anonymous people rather than having it in their own home. So many kids feel like they can't find it at home. At the first performance that I attended, a young woman was so upset by the ending that she cried and nearly had to be carried out of the theatre.

Elyzabeth is an only child whose father died when she was 11. He had been a great Anglophile, so she is particularly thrilled to be in London; and very aware of the history of the Royal Court Theatre. As a child, her father restored antique cars as his hobby and she wants to write something about that some day. In his will, her father left Elyzabeth a 1961 Rolls Royce named Zelda. Perhaps the disreputable truck in which most of the play happens has something to do with that early interest in motor vehicles. She has no idea where her interest in the story itself comes from. But there are more stories where that came from and already Elyzabeth is writing a second play - one which, she hopes, will also end up at the Royal Court Theatre.

Some reviews

Wilder, a 25 year old American dramatist of considerable promise, writes a strong, curt dialogue and knows how to sustain the tension inherent in her story.

There are plenty of good exchanges, and not only between husband and wife. Witness Eddie's dealings with his close buddy and brother-in-law, a New York cop played by John Sharian: here's a female dramatist who can write better about man-and-man than all but a few male playwrights do about woman-and-woman.

There's no director better than Wilson Milam when it comes to evoking the rougher, harsher side of American life, and, all cavils aside, his production generates the charged atmosphere Wilder presumably wants.

Benedict Nightingale, THE TIMES, 10 November 2004

Wilson Milam directs with verve, compressing the action into a small space dominated by Eddie's truck, the classic symbol of blue collar American malehood and, in this instance, also the site of transgressive desire.

Claire Allfree, METRO, 10 November 2004

Photographs by Stephen Cummiskey.