This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Alan Seales: Welcome to the Theatre Podcast. Intimate, personal conversations with the industry's biggest names. I'm your host, Alan Seales, and our guest today is playwright Dave Harris, who if there was a Theatre Podcast 30 under 30, this dude would be on it. He has so much talent in his fingertips, and he just puts them down on paper digitally, of course, and writes these incredibly amazing scripts. He's got two things that are being produced simultaneously right now on both coasts. So he's flying back and forth between LA and New York almost every other night because they're both opening at the same time. This is insane. He talks about that when we get going. And it's really fun because the conversation we got into, he was talking about how he uses his writing to seemingly work through fear on an unconscious level.

And I think that's his own form of therapy, right? Although consciously, he's always trying to improve himself, which is, of course, something we all should be trying to do. He has this incredibly funny fear of birds. He tells a story as to why. So he started reading up on birds to try to get over his fear, and now ends up loving birdwatching, but he still has this fear of birds. So he likes to birdwatch with a fear of birds. It's kind of funny. Before we get into the interview, please find me on Instagram and Twitter at theater underscore podcast on TikTok at the theater podcast. I'm Tiki talking. It's kind of fun. I don't know. Let me comment there. Let me know you're there. And we're gonna take a short break and then get into the episode. Enjoy this interview with Dave Harris.

[1:39] Alan Seales: Here you go. One, two, three. Today's guest is a poet, performer, and playwright whose recent work includes Tambo and Bones and Exception to the Rule. He's a Tao Foundation playwright in residence at Roundabout Theatre Company and has published a full-length collection of poetry called Patricide. And ever since I first discovered this dude, he has been on my list of people whose stories I cannot miss. Dave Harris, welcome to the theater podcast.

[2:09] Dave Harris: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. And I know we were just chatting before we started recording that you landed from L.A. last night around 10 p.m. Eastern, and now we're recording on the next morning. Why are you flying back and forth?

[2:26] Dave Harris: Yes, it's a very chaotic and exciting time right now. I have Exception to the Rule in previews right now at Roundabout and Tambo and Bones in previews right now at Center Theatre Group in L.A. So I'm going back and forth to help them both open as possible. So I was in L.A. I left to go to L.A. on Monday, came back to New York today, leave again to go back to L.A. on Saturday, and come back again to New York on Monday. Just trying to get to both of these openings and, you know, get my notes and do all that good stuff. But yeah, it's a crazy time. It's a crazy time.

[3:09] Alan Seales: Exception to the Rule was supposed to open a while ago, right? The original plan wasn't to have these at the same time?

[3:14] Dave Harris: No, it was not. I was two weeks. So I was living in San Diego, finishing up grad school, and Exception to the Rule was supposed to start rehearsals in March 2020. And I was two weeks from moving to New York to live here, and then Exception to the Rule got postponed. And then Tambo and Bones was supposed to happen at Playwrights Horizons in November 2020, and then that got postponed. And then we were in like a two-year limbo, and now finally, they're all happening. But of course, they're all back to back to back. So, you know, I just get the constant wave of going from show to show right now, which is super fun. And also, I am so tired.

[3:57] Alan Seales: And you are young, man. Like you are just out of, like you say, you just got out of grad school, and now these two shows happening simultaneously, two amazing shows, right? And then you're also, you have your fully published book of poetry, your full-length book. And all of a sudden, I mean, I guess we'll get back into the childhood in a second. But for the things that are happening now, the two shows and the poetry book, how long ago did you start working on these? And were they recent things? Did you craft them in grad school or undergrad? I mean, because you got your BA from Yale. We'll get into that. But like, hot damn, right? Like, seems like you've been working your ass off for how long now to all of a sudden have this come, all of these things happen at once.

[4:41] Dave Harris: I mean, you know, everything, every project takes a long develop, you know, like with playwriting, you can really get caught in the development hell, especially when you're starting off with just going to sort of every new play conference and work with, and they're all great. Like I've met some of like the best collaborators of my life through those things. But each of these plays has been in development for a while and has been like lined up and ready to go for a long time too. Like Miranda and I did our first reading of this play. Miranda Heyman, who's directing the show on Roundabout, who's a brilliant artist, directed the first reading of this play in New York in, I guess this was January 2019 and the 2018, something like that.

So, you know, we've been working together on this for a long time and finally it's coming to fruition. And Tambo and Bones started as a one act that then Amrita Ramanan from when she was working at Oregon Shakespeare Fest was like, oh, come develop this here. And then, you know, we'll like fly you out and you can work on the actors here. So, you know, everything takes a long process and then finally you get to see it on stage and it's up for two months and then it's over. So you really kind of get, but you get in the weeds of them for a long time. So it's, they're all things that I've been like working on and honing for a very long time. And I'm very fortunate that people are responding to them because, you know, I write them for myself and then it's a good coincidence that people like them too.

[6:03] Alan Seales: Well, okay, then you write them for yourself. So let's start out, little Dave, right? Born in West Philly and I'm resisting all of the urge to do the jokes about Fresh Prince of Bel-Air here. It gets even worse because I was born in Los Angeles and then moved to Philly. So there's like reverse Fresh Prince trajectory happening here. You got to write your own parody intro song for, you know, like just the reverse of what Will Smith did or yeah. But okay, so you grew up in West Philadelphia.

[6:34] Dave Harris: Yeah. So you weren't born, you weren't born there, but raised in West Philadelphia and on the playground you did not spend most of your days. But so when you were young, were you attracted to theater or was it musical theater? Was it like, what kind of stories? Because I'm always so curious how playwrights get into playwriting simply because the ability to craft a book is such a different process than writing lyrics or writing instrumentals.

[7:06] Dave Harris: Yeah, no, everything sort of comes from a different place. I've been writing in some shape or form my entire life. Like my mom, when I was in second grade, called that I was going to be a writer and I was like, no, you're not. No, I'm not. You're wrong. And of course she was right. But she did the same thing with my sister too. She called that my sister was going to be an elementary school teacher. And my sister was like, no, I'm not. I'm going to be a chef. And now she teaches second grade. So, you know, my mom just kind of prophesied the whole thing. But she teaches second graders how to cook. So that, you know, it all comes full circle.

[7:35] Dave Harris: So I've been writing in one form or another my whole life. I started in short stories and I was in elementary school. I kind of, my mom let me read Stephen King in an age when I really should have been reading Stephen King. And that sort of, I would write just these demented ass stories. And that's when I started doing theater too. I started doing theater in elementary school also. And then in sixth grade, I switched schools from a public school to a private school. All boys, old money, almost entirely white until my year when they dropped five of us into the school. Whole hot mess. A lot of my writing comes from that split that happened in that place. But in seventh grade, two things happened.

The first was that I realized I didn't have, all my friends were dudes. And then that day I saw an audition posting for, come audition for the school play at the Baldwin Girls School. And I was like, oh my God, that's the key. This in the most sort of prepubescent phase of my life. I was like, oh my God, that was the time. And the second thing that happened was that there was this group called Philadelphia Young Playwrights that a lot of Philly playwrights came through. Kiara Hudez came up through Philadelphia Young Playwrights and was part of it. And as part of my school's curriculum, we had to write and submit a play for the contest. And I wrote a play that got second place in the contest.

And then from that, ends up in that organization. So I was writing plays all throughout middle school and high school, went to college, not expecting it to be a thing. Cause I know one of my family had done the four-year college thing. So I was like, if I go, I have to do something that sounds legit. And then two years into it. So I went and think I was going to major in the hard sciences. And then two years into college, had a teacher, had a theater teacher who kind of slapped me inside the head and was like, you're lying to yourself. And I was like, you're right. And then have just been writing since, pretty much exclusively for, I mean, I've done like a lot of other things in between there, but everything's been geared towards writing and producing this material.

[9:41] Alan Seales: Oh my goodness. So much I want to cover. So the first of your family to go to college, to do the four-year college thing, you said, and then you go to Yale of all places. But I want to back up. We'll back up from Yale. We'll get to Yale, but you were saying, I was going to ask about the, the, I guess, what should we call it? Racial disparity of what you're saying in sixth grade, right? You went to sixth or seventh grade, right? You went to this school and there were only five, it was five people of color. You say you were one of five people of color who got dropped into this pretty much all white school or was it literally all white?

[10:10] Dave Harris: Um, essentially the, uh, sixth grade, um, it's, you know, you were in a transition from middle school to high school, middle from middle, from lower school to middle school. And the school runs from pre-K to high school. Um, and you know, I think sixth grade, there was an optics problem. So their solution was to go find, uh, five like gifted black students. Um, and, uh, sure. Drop it, drop it into the school with no guidance and anything at all. And, you know, none of us hadn't had, had really had access to a world that looked the way they, you know, this is like old, old money, you know, who had people who still like, I mean, like I've like met, I met rich people. I still, I'm just like, y'all, this is, this is nuts.

Um, and so that kind of, that's, that's where all my understanding of theater comes from. I think it's from the sort of like learning how to perform in that space and like sort of seeing how much of class and race is just based around a performance and just based around like how can you scheme in this world? Um, and yeah, so anyway, that's how I ended up in that school. I think that's a large part of how I ended up in theater and thinking through kind of performance theory and what it is to embody yourself or what it is to have like a true self, whether that's, whether that exists or not, um, comes from, I think that split of going to that school.

[11:34] Alan Seales: I'm fascinated by all of this and I will be the first to admit, I mean, I acknowledge white privilege and male privilege and being a straight white male, like certain things come with that, that until recently I didn't realize that just came because of literally my outward appearance that I have no control over. And now, especially in New York and all over the world with anti-Asian hate, uh, it's, and, and Black Lives Matter and everything that's been happening, like, hot damn, I don't need to make this a political episode, but it seems to me like there is so much, uh, uh, I guess racial, um, reckoning, right? There's an awakening that, uh, has been exposed and, and I won't say has been created.

It's not new. It's always been there. And I love, love, love that, that voices like yourself are, are writing about things that, um, are going mainstream. They need to be mainstream. They need to be more in the front, front of people's minds. And I love that this experience that you've had, right? This experience that is personal to you, you're writing it for yourself because I assume it's a, it's a form of catharsis, right? But then it's also, like you said, it's something that other people want to hear and get, and then all of a sudden you get produced and you get recognized because you're writing great stories. So there's, there's probably, there's two fold, two sides of this. One is a natural talent you probably got as a writer.

And then the other is drawing from these personal stories. People always say, write what you know. So has your, has your perception of what you've been writing been able to change over time as the culture has been shifting? And, um, I guess, like, going into theater is even old money and old white money at that, right?

[13:21] Dave Harris: Yeah. You know, I don't think the, the, the question that I would probably raise is that I actually don't think the culture is shifting. Um, I think every, every, there's always, there's been waves of discovery and something. It's like, we just find new language to describe the same exact phenomenon over and over again. Um, and so, and functionally for me, I mean, this is why I sometimes become really frustrated with theater and with, uh, um, with, with playwriting, with the field often is that I think so much of kind of the language of the moment is functionally just the distraction, you know, like for me, the reason why I write is not to, uh, uh, address something external. Like, you know, all the language around race and, and, and class and everything.

It's, it's, it's very, uh, consequential, but also it's functionally just like a distraction from the things I actually want to write about, you know? And so for me, it's, it's normally just a way to get into something, uh, some existential fear that I have beneath that, you know? Um, and, and that for me is what is most.

[14:58] Dave Harris: What's the cost of staying with the group versus leaving to go do whatever awaits you outside. And I think all of my playwriting is geared around this idea of how do you escape into what your own individual imagination is? And so the task for me as a writer is how, amidst a culture that claims to be shifting, but ultimately never is, how do I stay loyal to my own imagination and keep writing through that?

[15:34] Alan Seales: And so Exception to the Rule, you said it's six black teenagers in a room. The room is detention, so it adds that extra level of stress. And there's five people who are regulars there, and then the new girl comes in. And it sounds to me like, even though outwardly she is like the other people in the world, internally, she's facing the same struggles that you were literally just talking about with yourself of maintaining... How do you justify moving ahead and leaving others behind while still wanting to be part of the larger group? And so what you said, though, you want to write about what you want to write about, and you're struggling with that. What do you want to write about?

[16:16] Dave Harris: Oh, I mean, I want to write about everything I am writing about. I feel very grateful, because I think playwriting very much comes from my understanding of poetry, and the way that poetry was taught to me was that. Basically, I went to this poetry workshop called Callaloo, where this poet, Greg Pardlow, you basically sit in a room with 10 other poets, and you read him your poem. He reads your poem back to you, and he's like, this line is a lie, this line is a lie, this line is a lie, this line is kind of true, this line you're maybe trying to say something, tell me about your father, and then you basically just use your own words to catalyze you in the pushing beneath to find the thing you're actually scared of saying beneath the distractions of what you're doing on the page.

And so playwriting for me is usually, how do I keep finding a way to question a fear I have or a truth that I've settled on? So every play for me is addressing that in some way, it's addressing some very personal fear that I have, and hopefully trying to find a fun way to do that. So Exception to the Rule, that's why I almost tend to always write in comedies, is that for me, it's like, how do I find a fun way to interrogate this fear? So everything that I've gotten to write are the things that I've always dreamed about writing, you know, Tambo & Bones, I got to put an entire rap concert on stage, and that's the thrill for me. It's like, how do I do something that I've never seen? How do I continue to surprise myself?

And if I can surprise myself, then I think I can surprise an audience. So I feel very fortunate that everything I've written has been exactly in line with what I want to write, you know? And getting recognized, and it's getting produced. And I think that sort of takes to the Tao Foundation, Playwright-in-Residence. So you're Playwright-in-Residence at Roundabout Theatre. So for those who don't know, the Tao Foundation, let's see, it's a residency program. I guess, well, first of all, explain what the Tao Foundation is.

[18:19] Dave Harris: Yeah, so the Tao Foundation does a lot of things. Essentially, I had an interesting trajectory with them, because normally what they do is they help you, they give you money and help you become a part of the theatre that you're working at. But I was Tao Playwright-in-Residence when I actually couldn't be in residence in New York because of the pandemic. So they basically just helped, sort of funded me through the pandemic, and also helped make sure that this play stayed available to produce, basically. They really are just like, how can we support artists through a time in a play, in a city, in a time when it's hard to be an artist? And I think that looks different for every playwright, because there's Tao Playwright-in-Residence at many theatres.

They sort of just support people when they're in production in their place. So Emily Tao and the Tao Foundation just really helped me through the pandemic and helped make writing a sustainable thing through that time. And now, finally, it all gets to come to fruition when we finally get to do this play. The residency program includes a full-time salary and funds to support the work and guaranteed full production of the play by the sponsoring theatre company, and it seems like this is not an easy thing to become a part of. So what was the application process like to even get this?

[19:37] Dave Harris: It's not as exciting as it could be. Essentially, the theatre agrees to produce the play, and then through the theatre you apply to the Tao Foundation, and then they select maybe seven playwrights and seven plays at theatres in New York and sponsor this residency. Which, you know, it's sort of like typical grant writing process, which the weeds of that are not that exciting.

[20:13] Alan Seales: It sounds really competitive. I mean, just to basically get a free production for your show, for your script, it sounds like it's super hard. And for whatever reason, in my mind, when you were telling the story, I was thinking, I'm halfway through season three of Ozark, and I don't know if you ever watch Ozark, but the end of season two, spoiler alert, there's one of the kids gets accepted to college because he writes this really profound essay and whatnot. And I'm always thinking about writers when it comes to TV and film and these things, because there's some of the best, best, best monologues and dialogue and scenes and whatnot that you see on screen. I mean, there's great ones on stage as well.

And right now, you're young in your career, you're just really getting shot out of this cannon and having two plays produced simultaneously, which is incredible. Hopefully, both of them come to Broadway, knock on wood. And at the same time, have you had any opportunities then to sort of showcase the same sort of skills for movies, for TV? Is that of any interest to you at all to sort of like to do any of that sort of thing?

[21:26] Dave Harris: Yeah, I mean, I've been doing that for a while, for the last, when did I really start? I guess 2019 was when I really started getting into film and TV. The first project I worked on was this film called Summertime, directed by Carlos Lopez Estrada, who's a brilliant director. He just did Raya and the Last Dragon. And we did this kind of very small project that was based around these youth spoken word poets in Los Angeles. And that was my first feature writing gig. And I mean, it was like another thing where we just got thrown into the weeds sort of immediately. We had three months to outline, rehearse, write, and shoot the movie. And then ended up going to the opening at Sundance the following winter.

And that was like another one where I just jumped into it immediately, got to learn everything very quickly. And then ever since then, I've been working on a couple of different feature projects. I mean, I write for TV too, but screenwriting has been more, there's more flexibility with that. If I was in a writer's room right now, I couldn't be doing this interview right now because I would be in the room this second and I couldn't be in rehearsal. Whereas screenwriting, I can come home from rehearsal, be tired as hell, drinking a glass of wine and open final draft. And that sort of flexibility is what's letting me do that and theater at the same time. So yeah, in the pandemic in particular, when theater shut down, I compartmentalized all my grief by jumping really heavily into film and TV. And now I go between all three.

[23:08] Alan Seales: Do you have a favorite medium? And then also, are you somebody who is able to do multiple things at once like this, to jump to context switch and go between things? Or do you have to focus on one thing at once?

[23:17] Dave Harris: No, I'm at my happiest when I get to go between multiple things. I actually, every time a show opens and I go home, I'm usually depressed for a week because I'm just like, I don't know what to do with my time because rehearsal is so intense. I think that's, I learned that during Tambo & Bones, I think particularly with Omicron. And so we were so scared of getting shut down, like everything, it's so intense. And then the show opens and then you're just done and you're not there anymore. And you're just like, oh, what do I do with my body? Like, I don't know how to, you know, like last New York to go back to LA to go back home for after Tambo & Bones opened. I like went home, I just played Elden Ring, a video game for like a week straight. I was just like, I don't know what to do right now. So yeah, when I'm moving between different projects, that's when I think I'm at my best, my most stressed, but also my happy place.

[24:17] Alan Seales: That's really interesting. I have talked to some people who are like, I can't do more than one thing at once. And I feel like though, you have to go where the creativity goes. And especially in now the 20 minutes that we've been talking here, it seems like, you know, you've gone to writing and you're successful at writing because whether you're consciously doing it or not, you're using the outlet to express yourself. And you've talked about expressing grief and expressing and dealing with feelings and getting over fear and things that a lot of people go their entire lives without ultimately being able to do in one form or another. And it seems to me that the different stories that go along with the different mediums are always going to be changing.

So you might have like a happy rom-com that you're writing for TV that's like, okay, that's a paycheck. But then like there's something that doesn't pay hardly anything, but for theater, that's really gonna help you get over this great fear or grief or whatever the case is. Right?

[25:20] Dave Harris: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's a large part of how I ended up here. One of the biggest gifts of writing, I think, comes from the fact that I think there was such a dearth. It was often felt like a dearth of language in my family and growing up because things would happen so quickly and everything was so focused on survival and getting to the next day that there actually was, it frequently was their time to sit and process anything. And I think that's what writing has gifted me. I get to just sit and find language for things that are just patterns that we grew up with. Things that we just sort of accepted as habit or that's just the state of living. And now I get to just assign words to it.

And once I do that, then I feel like I can get control of the things I felt like I didn't have control over. And I think that's the thing you just talked about is what keeps me writing. And it might not be that way forever. 10 years from now, I could be like, all right, I'm done writing. I want to go be a birdwatcher, which honestly, I fucking love birds. I have a really complicated relationship with birds because I have a really bad bird phobia. It's not cute. And also, I love birdwatching. So I don't know, maybe 10 years from now, I'll be like, all right, I'm retired from the game. And now I just go observe mannequins in the wild or something. Who knows? But for now, this is the fun thing.

[26:45] Alan Seales: You sound like such a walking paradox. You want to birdwatch, but you hate birds. Where did your bird phobia come from?

[26:55] Dave Harris: Attacked by a flock of geese when I was four years old and never bounced back.

[27:00] Alan Seales: Why do geese attack?

[27:03] Dave Harris: Okay, so geese are terrible. They pose no danger, but they have a high intimidation factor. And it works really well in their face. That's why they honk and stuff. But when I was four years old, my mom and I went to this pond and feed them stale bread and stale hot dog buns. And my mom was laying back and letting me do it on my own. I was like, yeah, I'm growing, I can do this. Geese surrounded me. I was like, oh shit, I'm in danger. I take off running. I'm crying, but my dumb ass is still holding the bag of hot dog buns. So they're flying after me. And my mom is watching the whole thing and she's laughing too hard to come save me. The thing I remember is the geese wing flapping and the sound of my mom's laughter. And I was like, bam, trauma, it's done.

[27:59] Alan Seales: And that one experience has shaped who you are for the rest of your life, which is so interesting. I tell you, I've gone on dates and there's been a flock of pigeons on the side of the street. I'm just like, nah, we got to cross the street. I can't walk through these birds with you. Years ago, I was like, let me get to the bottom of this. So I started reading a lot of ornithology books and I was like, oh my God, birds are crazy. I have bird tattoos. I love it. But also if a bird comes near me, I will hit the ground. It's not... I thought learning about it would give me control over it. And I would say that that has not worked. My sister-in-law has a phobia of butterflies. So geese I can sort of understand because they're big, they flap, they honk. Butterflies I have never understood because they are the nicest, most gentle creatures that you can think of.

[28:56] Dave Harris: I get it. I feel for your sister. I think it's something about weight. They can come at you from any angle. You can't see them coming necessarily. I get it.

[29:14] Alan Seales: We're going to take a short break. Stay tuned for more of the episode.

[29:27] Alan Seales: Have you ever written something on paper or even got it to the stage, put it on its feet, and not completely understanding why it was written or why you took something to a certain place, a scene to a certain place, and then after you can watch it, you're hearing somebody else read it or seeing it on its feet, and you're like, oh, that's why I needed to talk about that.

[29:51] Dave Harris: Yes, all the time. I think that came through, especially with poetry. I would write something and have no idea what I was trying to write about, and then I would show it to someone, and they would be like, oh, this poem was about this, and I was like, oh, word? I thought it was just about birds, or I thought this was just about honeybees. And they're like, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. You're trying to get over that one relationship that broke your heart, or you're trying to say the thing to your mother you've never actually said out loud. And I was like, nah, this poem's about birds. It all sort of so much subconscious things that go into feelings and language. And if I were to sit down and do a free write right now and show it to someone, they'd be like, hey, are you thinking about this right now?

And I would be like, oh, I didn't even realize. And that came through often in poetry. Yeah, I really miss it. I haven't written a poem in a while, just because theater and film and TV stuff has gotten kind of crazy, but I really miss it for that feeling. That's so much fun.

[31:02] Dave Harris: I've always held myself back from writing, because I always... I guess I'm afraid, A, of the judgment, right? Because you're putting your inner thoughts down on paper, and sometimes they're pretty deep. But then the other part is just figuring out what you want to write about. And I guess that's where people talk about journaling. Like just journal. Journal every day. Write something down every day. Just start writing and see where it goes. Sometimes it's incoherent. Sometimes you get something great. And I should follow that advice, because part of what's holding me back from writing over time was simply because I didn't know what to write about. And I wanted to be specific. And I wanted it to come out profound and prolific and life-changing.

And sometimes what anybody writes is crap. And you just got to get the good with the bad, right? Do you judge yourself? Are you the harshest judge of yourself, or you just give no shits? And you're just like, all right, I'm just going to write down whatever comes out of my head?

[32:06] Dave Harris: That's a good question. I don't know how... This is a good question, because when you ask it, I'm like, oh, I don't feel like I have an answer at the ready, because I don't really judge my own writing that harshly until it's done or until I'm rewriting. And I don't know where that comes from. I mean, I feel I... Because normally, once I start writing, it just comes and goes. I can sit and just do it for eight hours. I'm not a write-everyday person, just because the space that I want to access when I write is not a space that I want to live in all the time, if that makes sense.

[32:43] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[32:43] Dave Harris: So I don't do it every day for that reason. I think it's just like that boundary is important to me. But when I am sitting down to do it, I don't feel that in my head or that judgmental of it until I'm rewriting. And then until I'm rewriting, I'm just like, oh, that line doesn't make sense. Then I can really get into the weeds. But the act of it itself is usually... I don't know. It stays fun. It's always stayed fun. And that's... I hope that fun continues. And when it doesn't, then I'll figure out what the next thing is that feels as fun as writing.

[33:27] Dave Harris: A therapist who specializes in bird phobias, obviously. You know, do therapy.

[33:32] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[33:33] Dave Harris: Yo, I've tried exposure therapy. I've tried. I'm gonna run through it. And it doesn't stick. I'm always curious and fascinated when you... You mentioned Stephen King, right? You're reading Stephen King at an age that you're too young to read Stephen King. And that dude is known for horror. They're obviously inside our minds or some... On a general basis, inside everyone's minds are some of the scariest, probably nastiest, horrible places that you can be for the most part. And that's why Inner Thoughts stay Inner Thoughts. But you've got these writers like Stephen King, who are just writing nothing but horror. And there are some really, really great TV shows and movies and scripts and stage scripts that are based... Some, in fact... So that's easier to say, oh, based on a true story, but some completely made up that are just kind of really horrible, horrible stories.

And, you know, whatever your definition of horrible is. But and again, going back to the feeling of being judged or feeling, I guess, scrutinized, right? Like if you're known for being this person who writes just really uncomfortable things or makes people feel uncomfortable, I guess, how do you find that comfortability level or the acceptance with yourself to be able to say like, you know what? I'm putting this out there because it's one thing. It's one thing to put something out there in the world and have a bunch of strangers look at it that are never going to talk to you and that you're never going to meet. But then you've got your mom, your sister, your friend, your close friends, your partner, whoever it is, who have to know that you've got these really sick thoughts inside.

[35:19] Dave Harris: I mean, I think I mean, I do. I hear you. I think just it would be otherwise, you know, like because it's otherwise I like I. I'm really excited for acceptance of the rules are open because it's formally very different from Tampa and Bones. And I think every single one of my plays is formally very different from the last play. And it's because, you know, once you for me, once I like I think there's a there's a there's a in a school of playwriting of playwrights who are drawn to doing a certain thing and they hone that thing over and over again. And in every play they write, you can see the thing thereafter, you know, like I think like and it's brilliant, you know, I'd like like Sam Hunter and like Dominique Morisseau, you know, like they're there formally are engaged with often with similar shapes of place, you know, or similar regions or similar areas.

And then I think there's kind of like like Julia Cho, like Ann Washburn, like the playwrights who like every play they write is a completely different shape. And that's that's the thing that excites me as a writer, you know, and that's I think why, like, people will come to acceptance of the rule, which is kind of a single set, six actors on a stage, just like having a feast, acting their asses off play. And now that that play is there, I won't ever write another play like that, you know, and that's that's the fun part of me. So like this thing about like, oh, how do you keep putting something out there? I think for me, it's like, oh, once, once I figure out how to say something, I never have to say it again.

And that, for me, I think pushes me pushing me through and also because like, I, you know, you can't let other people outwrite you. If other people if other people are going to if other people are going to a place, I'm like, all right, bet I gotta find the next place, you know, and that's the like, you know, like, I, like, I sometimes wish playwriting worked more like, like hip hop, where it's like, oh, we could write this tracks, or we could be like, okay, cool, cool, you did that bet. Okay, I'm gonna beat this flow with this, or we can, like, respond to each other in our work. I think that happens, you know, passively, but I would be really excited about a theatrical community where we really, we really did that. But that's another workflow.

[38:05] Alan Seales: Oh, man, I would love for you to write a loose script that incorporates some sort of audience feedback with looping technology. So you're telling a story that's slightly different every night. And maybe it's a one or a two person show. And using the looping, you can bring old parts of the script back to play with yourself as another character. There you go. There's your drop in the bucket.

[38:21] Dave Harris: There you go. Yeah. I mean, Tampon Bones was similar. It was like every, every, every night was different with that show, which was, which was part of the joy of it.

[38:30] Alan Seales: Oh yeah, I wish I could see it. I need to go to LA, actually. I'm overdue for a website. Your website is staydancingdave.com. Where's the dancing come from?

[38:41] Dave Harris: I've always been a dancer my whole life. And I think that I mean, that's one weird, that's one where I was like, oh, freshman year of college, somebody said that because I was doing stuff. I think I was like, doing bachata or something. And, and that name kind of stuck. And I was like, okay, cool. That'll be my brand. You know, you know, like first year, first day of college, it's like, oh, what am I going to be here? And I'm like, ah, that's, that's who it is. And but I mean, it stayed, it stayed, it stayed true. You know, one of the hard things about COVID was that there was no communal dance, dance, there's no communal dancing, you know, I gotta go to like, I went to a zoom, bachata dance.

And it was so sad. We were all so sad. We're just like, in front of our cameras, just like, there's like, you know, there was a DJ who was like shouting out people's zoom screens. I was like, this can't, this can't be the world. Like aliens, aliens come and look at this history tapes. Like, why are these people staring at random representations of electrons turning on and off? Like, they're literally, there's nobody in the room with you, you're all by yourself. And like, I'm literally talking to, to a bunch of metal, and with with it's being lit up by electrons right now, right? So I think man, I think about that all the time when I'm just like working on the computer. Just Oh, God, how far we've come and how so far we've got to go.

[39:45] Alan Seales: Oh, man. All right, the void, we're in the void, we're in the void. Alright, so let's wrap up with three standard closing questions that I ask everybody to end the episodes. The first one just very simply is what motivates you?

[39:54] Dave Harris: Friends imaginations.

[40:05] Alan Seales: Your friends imaginations are yours?

[40:05] Dave Harris: Yeah, no, my friends. I they all I feel like my friends are the greatest artists in the world. And I feel honored to be their friends, you know, and like, every time I get to every time I get to read something there, I get to like witness their artistry at work. I'm just like, like the I went to Massachusetts is like the homie. And like, I love her dearly. And every time I get to see one of her plays, I'm just like, Oh, yeah, cool. This is I'm like, I hate theater so much. And then I go see her face. I'm just like, Oh my God, no, it's such a gift to be alive right when you are. And like, I saw my friend Amara in for color girls on Broadway. She came on stage. And I was like, Am I Am I crying watching you on stage? Just like be yourself? You know, and I'm just like, Oh, yeah, of course. That's the greatest reason to keep doing this is that the people we love are doing it, too.

[40:44] Alan Seales: Alright. What advice would you give to your younger self and younger people listening now starting out down a similar path?

[40:48] Dave Harris: The advice I'll give to my younger self, fight back against those fucking geese. If I would have thrown hands with the first goose that flew at me, it would I would have I would never I would not have this phobia today. But I ran that me on a path of life that could have could have been redeemed much easier, much more easily. So that's my that's my advice.

[41:18] Alan Seales: What about our younger people down a starting at a similar path?

[41:25] Dave Harris: I don't have I don't have a bird phobia. Um, they that build build build a body of work before you spend your life trying to hone one piece of art. Yeah, I think I think for me, I, you know, I've wrote plays, plays, pretty much my whole life at this point. And the most useful thing was having multiple plays that were vastly different from each other than sort of like spending my entire spending years in the lab with one with one play and hoping that that was the one that would get me through it. Like, you know, the play that I've won the most awards for has never been produced, you know, as a play called White History. I don't think I might never it might never be produced. But it opened the door so that then I could like then slide in three more plays.

[42:13] Alan Seales: That's so cool. That's so cool. Alright. Last question. If you can only see one show for the rest of your life, but you can see it as many times as you want, what would you see?

[42:22] Dave Harris: Oh, oh. Maybe it's just because it's on my mind right now, but the skin of our teeth on Broadway.

[42:31] Alan Seales: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Alright. Alright. Alright. So you've got you got your website, staydancingdave.com. Where else can we find you online?

[42:42] Dave Harris: Instagram, Twitter, all the things at Stay Dancing Dave. You can find me in the theater at Roundabout until the end of June or in the theater in L.A. until the end of May.

[42:53] Alan Seales: Alright. Get more of me at the theater podcast dot com. I'm on Instagram and Twitter at theater underscore podcast. I'm on Twitter. I mean, tick tock now at the theater podcast. I don't know what I'm going to tick tock. This has been edited by well run hoodlum productions. Thank you to Jukebox the ghost for the intro and outro music. And Dave Harris, thank you so much. This has been so much fun.

[43:11] Dave Harris: Yeah, this is fine. Thanks for having me. Deep breath, make the world a little colorful.