TONY MENESES
Playwright of The Myth of the Two Marcos
Tony Meneses was born in Guadalajara, Mexico and raised in Albuquerque and Dallas. His plays include Guadalupe in the Guest Room, twenty50, The Hombres, El Borracho, and A Thousand Maids. He is an alum of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, Ars Nova Play Group, Sundance Institute Playwrights Retreat at Ucross Foundation, The Playwrights Realm Writing Fellowship, and Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Youngblood; his work has been previously developed at the Lark Playwrights’ Week, Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor, The Denver Center’s Colorado New Play Summit, The Old Globe’s Powers New Voices Festival, The Arkansas New Play Festival, and South Coast Repertory’s Pacific Playwrights Festival and New SCRipt Series. He is a two-time recipient of The Kennedy Center Latino Playwriting Award, is published by Dramatists Play Service and Theatrical Rights Worldwide, and has been previously commissioned by The Denver Center, Two River Theater, South Coast Rep, and The Juilliard School. He is currently under commission from The Old Globe. Education: The University of Texas at Austin, Iowa Playwrights Workshop, Juilliard.
Why are you excited to bring this piece to the O'Neill and what are you hoping to accomplish here?
This play is super nostalgic—it's about adolescence and comic books and the 90's—so it's some serious emotional time travel. One of my goals is to transport the audience back to the time in their own lives when they came of age.
What inspired you to create this piece?
I think we've all had early formative friendships, whether in childhood or even our college years, where someone means the world to us but then they suddenly disappear from our lives, even if there wasn't necessarily a falling out. This play to me is a tribute to those relationships that may not last forever, but nonetheless change our lives and indelibly shape who we become.
Why are you drawn to plays/musicals as a medium for storytelling and/or for telling this particular story?
There are things you can only do in a play. When I teach, I often try to boil it down to Time and Space. In a play, there are INFINITE things you can do with time and space, and given one of the themes of this piece is time itself, I was super excited to develop a vocabulary where time could be explored and exploded in all kinds of ways!
What advice would you give to aspiring playwrights?
This career is just like dating: you know when someone likes you, it's clear. And just like dating I have found instead of wasting energy trying to desperately get someone's attention, or change who you are, in the end it's better to just go where you're appreciated for who you are already.
Tony's reading recommendations to accompany your experience with The Myth of the Two Marcos:
Twilight of the Superheroes by Deborah Eisenberg
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
X-Men: The Age of Apocalypse (Omnibus Edition)