Why are you excited to bring this piece to the O'Neill and what are you hoping to accomplish here?

 

​While all of my previous plays have been funny, this is my first time writing an out-and-out comedy – a play whose main purpose is to bring people joy through laughter. Even more so than drama, comedy just can’t live on the page – it lives in performance, and in conversation with an audience. I’m thrilled to use this time at the O’Neill to test out different script and performance choices, to figure out ways to get more laughs (and more joy) in per minute.

 

What inspired you to create this piece?

 

In the past, I’ve had a tendency to write plays that are pretty bleak. Funny, but bleak. Like, “I looked into the heart of this thing and it turns out the heart of it is messed up on some fundamental level.” In the Spring of 2024 I was all geared up to write another play in that vein and I just… couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make myself sit down at the blank page and break my own heart. And I thought, what if I just try to have some fun? To enjoy myself, and mess around, and give audiences a good time? Of course, me being me, the play didn’t come out uncomplicated-ly chirpy. It’s about the tension, between being very aware of how the world works, yet also wanting some form of escapism. It's also about whether fantasy – dreams, romance, even entertainment - are just distractions we use to ignore reality, or whether there might be something healthy and healing about them.​​

 

Why are you drawn to plays/musicals as a medium for storytelling and/or for telling this particular story?

At this particular moment in time, the thing that makes me love theater is that it feels like the exact opposite of the internet. We’re spending more and more hours of our lives in digital spaces that are fragmented, polarized, artificial, lonely. Theatre is collective, collaborative, corporeal, concentrated, and communal. We show up in person and experience something together. We give each other the greatest gift anyone can give these days: focused attention. I think that’s why I wanted to write a happy play. For me, these days, theater is my happy place.

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What advice would you give to aspiring playwrights?

 

​Write the thing you want to write. Write the thing where, even if no one ever produces it, you’ll be happy you wrote it – because you enjoyed the act, the process of writing it. That’s easier said than done, but I think it’s a pretty infallible rule when you can pull it off. That way, you will enjoy the time spent writing. And if there’s something you’re obsessed with, or something you’re craving, there are pretty good odds other people are obsessed with or craving the same thing. 

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Eleanor's reading recommendations to accompany your experience with The Tale of Two Marcos:

 

All Fours by Miranda July
An American Ex-Wife by Lyz Lenz
Jane Austen books
The Bridgerton books
Funny Story by Emily Henry (or anything by Emily Henry)
School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
The Belle’s Stratagem by Hannah Cowley