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Friends, Foes, Fitting In: Adolescent Social Psychology

 

Abby Corrigan, Midori Francis and Nicole Rodenburg. Photo by Joan Marcus.

As Kyeoung makes her way from childhood to adulthood, she faces adversity not just from boys and men who treat her as an object, but also, importantly, from her female peers who befriend Kyeoung at a young age, but grow to demonize her for her sexual behavior and exclude her from their social circles. Social dynamics like the ones seen in Usual Girls have been the subject of a great deal of research in the field of social psychology, which has worked to illuminate the forces behind those adolescent behaviors that can become aggressive, exclusionary, and hurtful.

CLIQUES AND HIERARCHIES
Popular television and films tend to depict cliques as easily-definable categorizations of students in a high school or middle school: the “jocks,” the “nerds,” the “popular kids,” the “outcasts,” and so on. While cliques certainly arise from school classes and clubs, and often group together students of similar interests and demographics, they are not always as easy to spot as popular culture would have us believe. A clique is defined as any group of people who spend time together as friends and actively disallow others from joining their circle. The element of exclusion is the primary feature that distinguishes a clique from a looser group or pair of friends, and it gives rise to social hierarchies—that is, systems that rank people one above another.

Hierarchies within cliques:

👬 - Leaders: one or more people, tend to be very socially visible
👬👬👬 - Second-tier of leadership: support clique leaders but are often less well-known
👬👬👬 👬👬👬 -Followers: have little power in the group

Leaders of the clique may exert power by using positive or “prosocial” behaviors—such as cooperation, aid, and reciprocity—as well as with coercive tactics, like manipulation, deceit, and threats. A school environment can also give rise to hierarchies of cliques themselves, with “high-status” cliques of the most popular students—such as the girls who gang up on Kyeoung after her volleyball practice—often employing various forms of aggression to maintain their social status and visibility.

SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY
A deeper dive into the psychology of cliques reveals a broader sociological theory of intergroup behavior—that is, behavior that takes place between groups of people—called social identity theory. Developed by social psychologists Henri Tajfel and John Turner in the 1970s and ‘80s, social identity theory explores the degree to which a person’s inclusion in their social groups—cliques, schools, communities, nations, and so on—contributes to their internal concept of self, and how this identification with social groups leads people to treat those outside of their own group.

Tafjel and Turner’s research revealed that, as people jockey for a more “positive” social identity either by endeavoring to raise the social status of their own group, or by moving to a different group altogether, they tend to behave competitively and discriminatorily against those in different groups, regardless of how little they may know those people as individuals. Furthermore, when a person feels strongly about the social status of their own group, they will often act in the best interest of the group as a whole, even if that means doing things that are at odds with their own self-interest or behaving in a manner very different from how they normally would.

Early studies into social identity theory found common patterns of intergroup behavior between such real-world groups as the deeply divided Catholic and Protestant populations of Northern Ireland, black and white residents in American housing projects, and linguistic enclaves in Switzerland, among others. Teen cliques are just one kind of group that can be described by social identity theory, Tajfel and Turner’s framework can be very helpful in understanding Kyeoung’s relationships to her peers.

FRIENDSHIPS BETWEEN FEMALES
On a more intimate level than cliques, the one-on-one friendships that Kyeoung forges over the course of Usual Girls provide her healthy environments for navigating her young adulthood but also lead to painful breaches of trust. Psychological research into adolescent friendships in recent decades has identified behavioral patterns that are specific to friendships between females. While this research does not describe all female friendships categorically, the patterns that have been studied can help explain how friendships between girls are unique both in their benefits and in their challenges.

Studies have shown that, compared to friendships between males, friendships between females tend to become more intimate and involve more sharing of personal information. Female friendships are more likely to exist independently of larger groups than male friendships; this “isolation” can also encourage greater intimacy and lead to more meaningful bonds between females as compared to those between adolescent males. Physical intimacy, which often arises out of this emotional closeness, can lead to behaviors such as hand-holding, cuddling, and other acts that are traditionally associated with romantic relationships.

This intimacy can also, however, make conflict more fierce when it arises between female friends, especially if the private information that has been shared in confidence is maliciously spread to others. Because female friendships are more likely to exist independently of larger groups, the absence of a larger circle of peers to mitigate any potential conflicts can lead to harsher fights. Conflicts in female friendships tend to be more intense than those in males’, and girls are more likely than boys to terminate friendships altogether, or “friend break up,” which Kyeoung experiences firsthand in Usual Girls.

As decades of studies in social psychology have shown, Kyeoung is not at all alone in her struggle for social acceptance and friendship. Adolescents across the country and across world experience many similar social pressures, transitions, and fears.

Usual Girls is playing at the Black Box Theatre through December 9, 2018. Best availability on Sunday nights. For tickets and information, please visit our website.


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2018-2019 Season, Usual Girls


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A Conversation with Alexi Kaye Campbell

 

On October 13, 2018, Alexi Kaye Campbell spoke about Apologia with education dramaturg Ted Sod as part of Roundabout Theatre Company’s lecture series.

Ted Sod: You were born in Athens, Greece, correct?

Alexi Kaye Campbell: I was indeed.

TS: And your father is Greek and your mother is British.

AKC: Correct on both counts.

TS: Your real surname is…

AKC: Komondouros.

TS: Campbell is your mother’s surname, which you adopted because you didn’t want to be pigeonholed when you were working as an actor.

AKC: I grew up in Greece, but when I was in my twenties I moved to London and trained to be an actor. When I started my career I decided to change my name to Alexi Campbell. Campbell, as you rightly pointed out, was my mother’s maiden name. Then I found myself in this slightly absurd situation when British Equity informed me that I wasn’t allowed to call myself Alexi Campbell because there was a Scottish juggler by the name of Alex Campbell and it was too similar! So, I then ended up taking the “K” from Komondouros as an initial, but I wrote it out. When I started writing plays, it didn’t seem right to change my name back because I’d already been working in the theatre for almost twenty years. I think my father regretted me not using my real surname, but that’s a whole different story…

TS: You went to primary school in Greece.

AKC: I did. I went to Greek school until the age of ten and then I switched to the British school in Athens. We were a bilingual family. We spoke English and Greek at home. I grew up with both languages.

TS: Are you still able to speak Greek?

AKC: Yes, fluently.

TS: I’m curious about your coming to America to attend Boston University.

AKC: I think that was to do with getting as far away from home as possible because I knew it was the easiest way to discover and reinvent myself. There’s a line in the play that Kristin says: “I had to cross an ocean.” And anyway, I was always drawn to America. I grew up in the 70s and the US was an exciting beacon of possibility. I had a friend who came to Boston and so I decided to follow him. I applied and luckily was accepted at BU because I was a terrible student at school. But I slipped through and I studied there for four years.

TS: English and American literature?

AKC: Yes. And then I trained to be an actor in London and since that time I’ve been living there.

TS: What was the event that made you say, “I’m done with acting; I want to write.”

AKC: That’s a good question. I was always drawn to theatre. I had wanted to work in the theatre since I was about 10 years old. I suppose it was a sense of vocation. I loved it. I was obsessed with Shakespeare and all British theatre. But as I grew older I realized that one of the realities of the profession as an actor is that you are disempowered a lot of the time. What I mean is that a lot of the casting process is so random. Obviously, it helps if you’re a talented actor, but sometimes it’s suitability for a part. You don’t have much control. My career as an actor was good enough, I was working at some excellent theatres, but I struggled as well, there were periods of unemployment. And even when I was working it wasn’t always ideal. Say you have four things that you tick off whenever you’re cast in a production: great part, great production, great director, great theatre. I usually ended up with two ticks, so it wasn’t quite doing it for me. I started writing at 40. But I believe that the 16 years of experience I had as an actor very much informed my work as a writer. I think if I hadn’t been an actor, I would not be writing the kinds of plays that I do and in the ways that I do, because a lot of it had been shaped by that experience.

TS: If my counting is correct, you’ve written six plays for the stage and a screenplay entitled Woman in Gold, with Helen Mirren, which was the highest grossing independent film of 2015. Is that true?

AKC: It did very well, yes.

TS: And The Pride, which is one of two plays of yours that have come to New York City, was done in London in 2008 and Apologia was done there initially in 2009.

AKC: Yes, they were timed very close to each other. I think The Pride was first done in December of 2008 and Apologia was first performed at the Bush Theatre in London in May of 2009. So just a few months’ difference.

TS: Apologia was commissioned by the artistic director at the Bush Theatre at that time, Josie Rourke.

AKC: It was indeed.

TS: Can you tell us how that came about? Did she approach you? Did you approach her? Did the idea of the play intrigue her? How did that all happen?

AKC: I had written The Pride and I had started sending it out to theatres and Josie, who was the artistic director and now has a very stellar career as a film and theatre director, read it and admired it. She was the first person who put her money, or at least the theatre’s money, where her mouth was and she commissioned me to write a play. But there was no pressure on the subject matter. I just said I was interested in exploring a certain territory and she gave me “carte blanche” to go ahead and write the play. I presented her with a first draft, which I thought was not very good, but she had absolute faith in it and in me and she said, “Let’s program it.” So, that’s what she did and I was suddenly in a position where I had about four months to work on the play quite rigorously to get it into a better state.

TS: Now, in that version, Kristin was British.

AKC: She was.

TS: Will you talk to us about the revival in 2017 in which Stockard appeared, at Trafalgar Studios?

AKC: So, originally we did the play at the Bush Theatre in 2009 and it was well received and people seemed to enjoy it. There were producers who were interested in trying to give it another life. So, there was a concerted effort to find another home for it in the West End, but it didn’t work out. And then a few years later, there was interest from the States, and American actors, so I thought, let me just try this, and make Kristin American. I decided this because I knew that any actor playing Kristin would not want to do it in a foreign accent – the part is challenging enough as it is. In the beginning, there was a part of me that was worried that I was making this choice for the wrong reasons. But when we did a reading of the American version, I felt it worked better than the original and so I was able to support that idea wholly and with no doubt. I found that there was something poignant about having an American Kristin who had moved away from home to “foreign soil”, and suddenly meets this younger American who shows up at her home. It added another dimension to the play which I enjoyed. I didn’t think that it compromised the original version and I was happy about that. So, now there are these two versions of the play in print.

TS: By the other American, you mean Trudi?

AKC: I mean Trudi, yes.

TS: When we talked for the playgoers guide interview, I asked you what inspired you to write the play and you said you’ve always been interested in themes of inheritance. I believe that’s a theme in The Pride as well. Can you talk a bit about why that’s important to you as a writer?

AKC: I don’t know why I get drawn to certain themes or ideas. You just follow your instinct and see where that takes you. I think I’m interested in the confluence between the personal and the political and where those two meet. For instance, there were things that happened to my own family – my parents’ divorce, for example - which were directly connected to movements in society, none of it happens in isolation. And, as you know, during the 60s and 70s there were huge social and cultural shifts. A lot of the things we take for granted now -- I suppose what you’d call liberal values – were taking root then, especially regarding movements such as feminism, civil rights, gay rights. So I wanted to look at that period – those seismic shifts – and explore the legacies of that time and what the next generation had inherited, both personally and politically.

TS: I watch the play and I’m stunned by the passion that has never left Kristin or her comrade, Hugh, to try to do the right thing socially and politically. When she says that line to her son, Peter, about the work that he’s doing -- what word does she use? Work is an…?

AKC: Offering.

TS: Offering. It feels so foreign now, in our upside down world where greed just seems to have taken over. I love that you have a character like Kristin in your play who has dug in, for better or for worse, and still wants social and political change to happen so badly.

AKC: I’m glad you describe her that way. I think it is pivotal to the play. The character I was trying to create was someone who was on the frontlines and who believes in specific causes. She is an idealist who made sacrifices. She really does feel strongly about what is articulated in the final act of the play by the description of the mask that Trudi gives her: that the personal and the public are connected and interdependent. I think that, even now, if you didn’t have resistance, if you didn’t have people who really believe in justice and equality and in fighting the good fight, things would be a lot worse than they are. It’s easy to take things for granted. Of course when you’re young it’s easy to be blinded by anger and say, “’look at this mess I’ve inherited!” I am also aware that there is some mocking of the 60s mindset, some people think of it as a cliché, like Claire does in the play. But for me perhaps, it is more personal, simply because I am gay. I am fully aware that if it wasn’t for people like Kristin and Hugh, who were pioneers in the 60s and 70s, who really put themselves on the line, it would have been a lot harder for people like me to live with the freedoms I enjoy. I’m very grateful for those changes that happened and I suppose I wanted to honor those people who gave a lot of their time and energy to those causes.

TS: I’m tremendously moved by the end when Kristin has her self-reckoning. What I’ve come to understand is that -- and I don’t know if this is still true -- at the time of her divorce in Britain, Kristin’s husband would have been given custody of their children. Is that true?

AKC: I think it’s interesting that just before Kristin has this visceral response to the past and the choices she’s made, she articulates the fact that she was living in a world which pretty much forced her to choose between being a mother and being a creative contributor to the world. And I think that’s true. Society was shaped in that way. There’s a lot of my own personal history woven into the play, not that my mother is anything like Kristin, but it was much harder for a woman in the 70s to make those choices. In some ways, Kristin did have her arm – and her soul, as she says in the play – twisted.

TS: I sense that Kristin is still hurt by the fact that her ex-husband just took their children and she really had very little recourse. Her sons are fascinating to me because they haven’t really been able to understand her perspective at all and the memoir she writes is a catalyst for that.

AKC: I think that when there’s any kind of trauma in a family, there’s a part of you that freezes in the moment of trauma. The boys suffered trauma when they were children because they were very close to their mother and suddenly she wasn’t there anymore. To some extent, I believe that there is a part of them that is frozen in that moment. You go through your whole life not really addressing those issues. And then something happens that means you can no longer dismiss or ignore it, and in this case you’re absolutely right. The publication of her book makes it very real and raw again so that that part of the boys which is in some ways frozen in time comes to the fore. I think we all create narratives for ourselves to survive. That’s what we do. And then, when we all express those narratives, we realize that our stories don’t always match.

TS: I’m curious about the inspiration for the characters of Claire and Trudi because they are so different. Trudi is just lovely even though I don’t think I could ever be friends with her. I have to say that on some level, she really is a Christian. I love Claire because she makes a viable case for her choice to be in a serial drama on television or whatever she calls it. I think she’s right -- if you come from poverty, and I certainly have, you don’t want to go back.

AKC: Absolutely. It’s easy sometimes for more privileged middle-class people to make judgements about that kind of thing. But for me the act of writing a play is an exercise in exploring one’s multiple personalities! You realize you have all these different sides to yourself and a lot of times you’re finding ways to answer questions that you’ve been carrying around with you for a long time. There’s a bit of me in all of those characters. With Trudi, I was very interested in trying to call out people’s prejudice. I was trying to set up these characters who you think you know, but by the end you realize it’s never that simple. That happens to me a lot. I meet someone and I think I know who they are and then gradually I see that they’re not what I thought they were at all. At moments like that I’m forced to face my own prejudice and that’s always instructive.

TS: Trudi does seem intimidated by Kristin’s intelligence, but Claire doesn’t seem to be bothered by it.

AKC: No, she’s tough. Well, she’s a survivor. As you say, she’s come from a background that has given her a lot of steel.

TS: When I interviewed Stockard, I asked, “What’s going on between Kristin and those significant others of her sons?” And she said, “Well, I wouldn’t want Kristin for a mother-in-law. Would you?” I think what’s interesting is the fact that Kristin is really like a lot of women I know from New York City -- they can get right to the core if they want to.

AKC: I agree and I think that’s why Stockard is just absolutely brilliant in the part and I feel so hugely grateful that she’s playing it.

TS: The only other character we haven’t really discussed is Hugh, Kristin’s gay male friend. That is a 42-year-old friendship. That happens a lot, in my understanding, between gay men and straight women. There’s some…

AKC: Synergy, yes.

TS: Is that something you’ve experienced yourself or just something that you’ve seen? Because it’s rich. It feels real to me.

AKC: I’ve got lots of very close female friends, but I’ve also met people like Hugh. I didn’t have anyone specific in mind, but I’ve seen relationships like the one Kristin and Hugh have. I thought it was very important in the play to have somebody who was completely on Kristin’s side and as he says, is her witness for the defense. There’s something about relationships where there’s no sexual dimension. People get very close in a different way and can become emotionally dependent on each other. At some point they become almost symbiotic and can finish each other’s sentences. I’ve seen quite a few friendships like that.

TS: I want to talk about the story that Simon tells Kristin at the beginning of act two because I sat in the audience thinking, this is going to end badly. This is going to be one of those abuse stories where a young boy is taken advantage of. But it doesn’t turn out that way. Can you talk a bit about finding that? Was that a discovery?

AKC: There was a discovery in that I knew that Simon has two objectives in that scene. One is that he comes to punish her. And the reason he comes to punish her is he’s just read the book. He just feels that it is a rejection. And, of course, he’s a storyteller so he will punish her by telling a story of something that happened to him. And the second objective is to articulate his truth - the very act of speaking something which he’s never expressed before, and which is connected to his mental and emotional state. There is a kind of release in that. I didn’t want to sensationalize it by turning it into a story of sexual abuse but he did experience this moment in his childhood which jarred itself in his mind and he needs to get it out in some way. The memory of that night in Genoa comes to represent all the feelings he had as an adolescent missing his mother. Those two objectives of Simon’s – to speak his truth, and to punish his mother – form the basis of that scene.

Audience Question 1: Did you write the roles of the two brothers to be played by a particular actor that you knew? How did you make the decision that the brothers never interacted? Did you ever imagine a scene with them together or did you always want to keep them separate?

AKC: That’s a really interesting question because what happened was in the first draft of the play, Simon came on earlier. He came on in the dinner scene and I realized something happened which has to do with tone. The first half of the play has a comical dimension; that was my intention. I wanted it to be teetering between drama and something more comical. But, of course, the minute Simon came on you couldn’t do that, because the tone suddenly shifted. In the second draft, I kept Simon’s entrance separate. That made sense because you come back after the interval and meet the play on new terms. Something’s changed. It also felt dramatically correct because I think that scene with Simon is the beginning of Kristin’s reckoning. It takes place in the middle of the night and needs to feel almost like a dream, it sits separately from the comic naturalism of Act One. In the original production, we had two actors playing the brothers and then I went to see the play in Germany and they had one actor playing both roles and I liked that because it raised the play slightly out of its naturalism and gave it a more poetic quality.

Audience Question 2: Coming back to the play in this current climate, do you think that the kind of radicalism that helps move society forward necessitates the personal cost that the play explores?

AKC: I think it probably does. I can’t imagine that giving a great deal of your time to political or social causes won’t take its toll on your personal life, how is that even possible? And yes, in times such as now these questions are becoming more urgent than ever. When we played the play in London, I liked the fact that a lot of the younger people were very much on Kristin’s side. It’s interesting because it’s split a lot of times. People either move toward her or judge her but it was a lot of the younger people who admired her and understood the sacrifices she made. I wrote this play ten years ago, but I was saying on the first day of rehearsals that I’m glad it’s taken this much time to come to the States because suddenly the subjects the play discusses -patriarchy and feminism amongst others - suddenly feel more topical than ever.

Audience Question 3: Getting back to the question of the brothers, what was the thinking about naming them Simon and Peter?

AKC: I’m going to be absolutely honest with you. I wrote this play and when I finished it, there was all these Christian themes and motifs that seem to be woven into it. I’m not religious, and yet the play is full of religious references. At the risk of sounding hugely pretentious some of the choices you make when you are writing are conscious and some aren’t and you have to trust them. The names of the characters – Kristin, Simon, Peter – could be seen as being allegorical, but that wasn’t the intention when I chose them.

Audience Question 4: You have the characters reference Giotto’s Lamentation, Anna Karenina and A Doll’s House as ways to explore agency and femininity and motherhood. How did you find yourself using those as reference points for those characters?

AKC: It’s difficult to think back now because I wrote the play a long time ago. I write in bursts. Some of the choices I made, I don’t really know why I made them. Some of it is conscious and some of it isn’t. I realize that on this play, which is all about questioning motherhood and female empowerment, there are references to great works of art which have also questioned female identity in patriarchal contexts. And I promise you that’s not in any way self-aggrandizing – I’m not equating this with any of those pieces of work! -- but I think it just happened naturally. Anna Karenina is probably my favorite book and Doll’s House I also love, but it was not conscious. I really didn’t sit and think, now I’m going to find another feminist reference. I didn’t do that. You tell a story, characters express themselves, that’s all.

Audience Question 5: Kristin’s profession is art history, but I found that an interesting choice because it’s such a conservative profession, especially with her focusing on the Renaissance. I’m thinking that in the 1970s, for her to go to grad school and become a writer and professor was in itself a radical act when she was also a mom. I’m wondering why you chose that for her profession?

AKC: In Britain in the seventies there was an art historian named John Berger who wrote a seminal book called Ways of Seeing, and he was a very pivotal cultural figure at that period . Mostly because he did a series on television that was seen by many thousands of people. He was a Marxist art historian. I’d read his work and I was drawn to the idea of looking at art from a radical political perspective. And yes, for that to come from a woman is even more unconventional than it is coming from a man, for the reasons you’ve just mentioned. The way I tried to weave it in is that even when Kristin’s talking about Giotto, she talks about it from a Marxist perspective. That’s what I was interested in exploring. Kristin keeps going on and on about the responsibility of the artist and the social changes that art can bring about and she sees art as being in conflict with religion. Ultimately, I kind of feel that both art and religion do offer stories and versions of reality which try and help us to make life more bearable and point us in a certain direction. There is a link between religion and art, I feel. Kristin sees Giotto as somebody who is trying to take religious motifs and move them beyond religion and give them a humanist dimension.

TS: The political changes happening in this country and elsewhere are mindboggling and scary for me. The only hope I have is art. That movie, Philomena with Judi Dench, turned Ireland against the Catholic church. They now have gay marriage and women have the right to an abortion. I may be wrong, but it seems that that movie, that work of art did that. Do you follow what I’m saying?

AKC: I do, absolutely. It’s an interesting question because you never want any form of art to be either moralizing or didactic or anything like that. You want to invite different ways of seeing. Ultimately, I think art is about making it easier to see that there are lots of different perspectives and hopefully we will be able work our way through discord.

Audience Question 6: Just to follow up on art causing change, when Kristin and Trudi are going through the history of the mask, Kristin suddenly realizes that it’s highly appropriate to her way of thinking -- this idea of women leading community in an entirely different way.

AKC: I think Kristin sees her role in some ways as a protector and nurturer, which traditionally we associate with motherhood. Hugh says to Peter, “She did it all for you.” And Peter says, “How was any of that for us?” Then Kristin and Trudi come back in the room, so the question is left hovering in the air, and then the mask articulates the answer to that question: that the personal and the public are completely interdependent. We are in a moment of great crisis and it’s interesting to think the model isn’t really working - we seem to be destroying everything, including the environment. So, if women are to start having a more influential and positive role on where we go as a species, as a planet, then we need to rethink the patriarchal models which have been around for hundreds of years because they’re not working anymore. And I think the empowerment of women – and the feminine in general – are pivotal to that.

Apologia is playing at the Laura Pels Theatre through December 16, 2018. For tickets and information, please visit our website.


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2018-2019 Season, A Conversation with, Apologia


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Interview with Alexi Kaye Campbell

 

Education Dramaturg Ted Sod spoke with playwright Alexi Kaye Campbell about his work on Apologia.

Alexi Kaye Campbell in rehearsal for Apologia. Photo by Jenny Anderson.

Ted Sod: What inspired you to write Apologia? What do you feel the play is about? Does the play have personal resonance for you and, if so, how?
Alexi Kaye Campbell: I’ve always been drawn to themes of inheritance and how it is that one generation responds to the previous one. In the case of Apologia, I wanted to write about women of the 1960s and ‘70s who had to make difficult choices in order to pursue their political and social convictions. For me, those two decades’ momentous and often revolutionary changes on the fronts of feminism and gay rights are often either overlooked or simply forgotten by today’s radicals. But I feel that many of the liberties we now take for granted would never have taken hold if it wasn’t for the battles fought by that previous generation. So, I suppose my inspiration was in some ways to pay homage to those pioneers. I think more than anything the play is about the high price that has to be paid by people who want to change the world, or dare to improve it. That the advances made socially often come at a heavy personal cost to those who make them. Like most of everything I write I have borrowed and stolen from my own life and my own past but then heavily fictionalized it. My family had its fair share of pain and recriminations, but which family doesn’t?

TS: Will you give us a sense of the kind of research you had to do in order to write this play and how you went about doing it? Can you give us a window into your process as a playwright?
AKC: My main protagonist, Kristin, is an art historian who specializes in the life and work of Giotto. I am always very nervous of doing too much research before I complete a first draft of a play—it can often hinder or weigh down my instincts and inspiration—so I tend to do it in between a first and second draft and then rewrite accordingly. In this case, apart from reading about the period in which Giotto lived and worked, I made an appointment to meet with an art historian from the National Gallery in London who shared that area of expertise with Kristin. I was then able to ask her specific questions and read to her some extracts from the play in order to check that I was on the right track. One of the reasons that Kristin is so drawn to the work of Giotto is that she regards him as a proto-humanist, someone who was working within the context of religious art whilst also bringing to it something new and revolutionary which she calls “the vision, the power, and the responsibility of the artist”—the artist as instigator of social and political change. So, I needed to be confident that Kristin’s interpretation of Giotto was one which was accurate and convincing. My process seems to change from play to play, but I tend to be a big rewriter. For me, playwriting is very like sculpting —you will chisel away at this big piece of stone, and the more you do so the more the play begins to reveal itself. My work has also been shaped by the fact that I was an actor for many years and by everything I learnt working in the theatre from that particular angle, especially when it comes to characters and their objectives. When I am working on a scene, I always ask myself: what do your protagonists want to achieve, how will they try to do so, and what are the obstacles that will get in their way?

TS: Will you talk about the development process for this play? The play was presented first at The Bush Theatre and then last year at Trafalgar Studios in London. Do you expect to be at many rehearsals in NYC? Will you continue to rewrite throughout the upcoming Roundabout rehearsal process? If so, what type of events usually motivate your revisions during rehearsals or previews?
AKC: Apologia was commissioned by Josie Rourke, who was then Artistic Director at The Bush Theatre in London, which is where it was first performed. The play’s protagonist, Kristin, was originally English, but when we wanted to attract an American actor for the London revival, I rewrote the character as an American expat who had been living in Europe. At first, I was worried that this would upset or compromise the play, but after we did a reading of it I preferred it to the original. The reason for this is that an American Kristin adds to the idea of her as an outsider on foreign territory, a loner. Also, when she meets the only other American character in the play, Trudi, it is as if a part of her past and the country she has run away from eventually catches up with her. As it is a play about Kristin’s hour of reckoning, this all seemed apposite. I am planning to be around for the New York rehearsals, and of course I will keep my ear to the ground for any new changes that may need to be made. We are living in a world of very heightened and alarming developments in the political and public spheres, which the play needs to respond to, if needs be. It is after all a play about liberal values, many of which seem to be under interrogation and threat for the first time since their establishment.

TS: Can you tell us what your collaboration with Stockard Channing and Hugh Dancy has been like?
AKC: Stockard is an absolute joy to work with. Apart from being one of the finest actors of her generation, she is also perfect casting for the part of Kristin and took to it like a fish to water. She has access to all the wit and acid that the character needs, whilst also matching her intellectually and having the depth to explore the character’s doubts and wounds. I loved working with her in London but really look forward to rediscovering the play with her a year later, for its New York incarnation. I am also hugely excited about working with Hugh Dancy again. Hugh was in Joe Mantello’s production of my play The Pride in New York a few years ago, and I have huge respect and admiration for his work on stage. He is a wonderful actor, and always generous.

TS: Your play deals with how successful women are often criticized for prioritizing their careers over being a parent, and how many feminist women like Kristin paved the way for future generations of ambitious women. The play also makes some very salient points about the baby boomer generation and their politics. How many of them were bereft by the unfulfilled promise of social revolution during the ‘60s and ‘70s. Why were you interested in writing about these subjects?
AKC: As I answered in a previous question, I have always been drawn to writing about the past and the present and comparing them. My generation (which I share with Kristin’s children in the play) is one which seemed to be far more drawn to a materialistic and often nihilistic view of life, in which many of the ideals fought for by our parents had been forgotten or often ridiculed. But if you live with diminished ideals and a predominantly materialistic worldview, you will inevitably be led to a point of crisis where you ask yourself some fundamental existential questions. And those questions will inevitably point back towards your parents and the type of relationship you had with them. I wanted to write about that very moment of conflict—the moment in which a disillusioned man confronts his mother with questions relating to what it means to be a good parent. That moment of conflict felt to me as if it encapsulated something of where we are now as a society, the eternal dialogue between the personal and the political. The main question the play asks is “how can one be a parent to one particular person and to the world simultaneously?” At a time of environmental crisis, growing inequality, and political and religious fundamentalism, it is a question that I ask myself more than ever before.

TS: Another idea in the play is the tenuous relationship between adult children and their career-driven parents. In this case, Kristin’s two adult sons have unresolved feelings about her “abandoning” them. What intrigued you to write about this subject? One of your characters who is not intimidated by Kristin’s acid tongue is Claire, her son Simon’s girlfriend. How did you find that dynamic in the play, and why was it important to you?
AKC: I am intrigued by the notion of selective memory and of wildly differing interpretations of events within families—of how we all carry our own personal narrative of the past. We can all go on living with these varied versions of our lives together until the moment we begin to air them. That is the moment we will realize that the people we love don’t see things or remember things quite the way we do. And that’s when the drama starts. Because often, our narrative does not exist simply as some fanciful idea, it is an essential part of our survival mechanism. And if that mechanism’s authenticity is called into question, then so is that very survival. That is why I wanted to write about the subject of children having very different interpretations of the past to their parents. What happens when a child questions a parent’s long-held view about the past they both share? Every character in the play challenges Kristin’s narrative of her life, but perhaps it is Claire who best articulates her tragedy. Claire is a survivor, someone who has also had to fight to belong, and to be heard. And what she rightly identifies in Kristin is the fact that Kristin’s need to believe so stubbornly in her own interpretation of the choices she has made is imperative if she is able to survive as a human being.

TS: How have you been collaborating with the director, Daniel Aukin? What made you want to collaborate with him? What do you look for in a director when collaborating on a play you’ve written? Can you give us an example of the type of questions you’ve asked each other while working on this play?
AKC: I met Daniel and instantly liked him and felt we had a good rapport. Apart from being a director who works brilliantly with actors and text—I loved his production of Admissions and had heard nothing but praise for all of his work—I immediately felt he completely got the world of the play. Because of his own personal history—he grew up in London—he has immediate access to the world of Americans abroad and all the specific characteristics of that particular demographic. Also, he understood the English dimensions of the play—its humor, as well as the awkwardness of the English in social situations, the games that are played as they try to negotiate their emotional territories. I have been extremely fortunate in collaborating with some of the best directors working in theatre today. The quality I most admire in a director is their ability to listen to a play and respond to its heart and soul. I believe a good director will be as versatile as a good actor, always excited to reinvent themselves with every new piece of work. Daniel and I have been asking each other many questions about the themes of the play and about how we can bring those themes alive to an audience. About the design, the tone, the style, of the production. Ultimately though, however detailed these discussions may be, part of being a playwright is handing the play over to the director and the other creative people involved and allowing them to make it their own. It is always difficult, but completely essential, to take a step back and allow others to interpret it.

TS: What other projects are you working on? What are you most excited about writing next?
AKC: I am currently working on a new play that is a commission for English Touring Theatre, as well as a film set against Sheridan’s Drury Lane in 18th Century London, which is a riotous romp and great fun to write. And a couple more things in the pipeline.

TS: Where were you born and educated? Did you have any teachers who had a profound impact on you as a writer? What keeps you inspired as an artist? What advice would you give a young person who wants to write for the theatre?
AKC: I was born and brought up in Greece to a Greek father and British mother. I went to a Greek primary school—I grew up in a completely bilingual home—and then went to the British School in Athens. I did have a teacher there called Chris Brown, who had the most profound and long-lasting effect on my life. She introduced me to the theatre, and with her passion and commitment, persuaded me that my life was going to be forever attached to it. I have tried so many times to track her down and express my everlasting gratitude to her but have not been able to find her. But she quite simply determined the course of my life and offered me a strong sense of direction, which is the greatest gift a person can ask for. I read voraciously, I go to the theatre, I try to travel far and wide. I try to keep an open and curious mind. And remain hopeful despite the challenges. To a young person who wants to write I can do no better that quote Stephen Sondheim: “Anything you do, let it come from you, then it will be true.” And part of that means ignoring trends or at least, the tyranny of cool. If your primary objective is to be original, then you will also be inauthentic. And by all means be inventive with form but only if the form serves the content and the substance of what you feel you need to communicate.

Apologia is playing at the Laura Pels Theatre through December 16, 2018. For tickets and information, please visit our website.


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2018-2019 Season, Apologia


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