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[0:00] Jeryl Brunner: From Shakespeare to Schwartz, from Fossey to Alvin Ailey, from Santam to Borealis, from McNally to Faye. It happened to the greats, it still happens every day. When lightning strikes is the moment you know. When lightning strikes, where you're meant to go. You can stand in Chalureka. Do whatever you like. You'll never forget the moment when lightning strikes.

[0:28] Jeryl Brunner: Hi, this is Jeryl Brunner, and you're listening to When Lightning Strikes, where we talk about the tingly mic drop moments that led you to becoming an artist. Crystal Skillman is an award-winning dramatist. Her play Open, which was awarded a New York Times Critics’ Pick, has been running Off-Broadway at WP Theater through July. Her next play, The Rocket Men, is about to receive a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere across the country. Welcome, Crystal.

[1:11] Crystal Skillman: Oh, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

[1:14] Jeryl Brunner: I'm so honored for you to be here. So let's talk about Open. You're in the midst of this beautiful run at WP Theater. What inspired Open?

[1:28] Crystal Skillman: I wanted to write a relationship with a deep love and the idea of saving that love and what that meant. I was also inspired by I'd written a play called Wild about Peter and Bobby and their relationship. In the lobby, I'd overheard some, and this was New York on Christopher Street, some audience members saying it's so great that Crystal wrote Peter and Bobby like a real relationship, like a normal relationship. And I was like, this is confusing. This was around 2014 that we were still thinking that we were always hearing that. And so that was on my mind. And then it felt like these two things might go together. So I asked myself, is there a way that I could reach the audience wherever they're at on their journey to understand and to show and to feel the love of Kristen and Jenny, which ends up becoming the story of Open.

So I realized in terms of telling the story of the love of these two women, a female magician is very, very powerful. The image of her as a female magician inspires people. It's something that female magicians are now on the rise, but it's been a male-dominated industry, and many of the stories come back to male stories. Magic in itself almost has like a bro-like culture of pickups and all sorts of things going on. So these ideas were kind of in my head, and when I closed my eyes to kind of start writing, I saw the magician on stage, and the magician started to tell the story of Kristen and Jenny. And so I kind of was really a scribe in the very beginning and getting those pages down. And once I realized I had something, I went to my friends Megan Hill, the actor, and Jesse D. Hill, the director. And that was around 2015.

[3:15] Jeryl Brunner: Well, for people who might not know, can you share what Open is about?

[3:20] Crystal Skillman: It's about so many things. It's about relationships, it's about magic, it's about wishing you had the power to maybe transform history or transform somebody's future. But I'll let you share. What if somebody were to ask you, what is Open about, what would you say?

[3:45] Crystal Skillman: I always say that it's a magic show without magic until you live through the magic and about the love of two women. I think that it unfolds a little bit like origami, and it took a while in writing and workshop with our team over many years to kind of perfect what it means to experience a magic show without magic. What does that look like? What does that feel like? What does it sound like? And how is the experiential? And then there are moments where the magician is doing tricks in a pantomime way that the audience starts to see and how it's built into the show. So a good example will be in the very beginning. She takes a pantomime of sticking flowers out of a hat, and there's no sound, and we don't actually know.

We're like, oh, this is interesting, where is this going? And then she looks, goes, you don't see, and we realize, wow, she's being honest. I actually didn't see anything. Okay. And then she teaches us a bit how to see, and she says, this is a magic act that's a contract between you and I. What I say you must see. She does it again, and there's a sound, and then all of a sudden we're like, oh, and then when she starts to even interact with us, there are sounds that come from the sound design that's pretty amazing and planted in the audience. So there's one moment where she makes eye contact with a member, she throws out a ball, the audience member pulls up their hand, and actually they hear a sound effect just as they reach out, and they could feel, you could see that the audience is the weight of the ball in their hand, and then the other audience members are looking and they're like, oh, wow, I see it too.

And so then there's this thing where the more we see through the magic, when she starts talking about our partner, Jenny, we start to see and feel and experience that magic in a different way than in the traditional play, starting with just telling a story. And then talk about suspension of disbelief. There is this beautiful moment where the lighting changes and she puts on a light bulb from a stretch. It's all imaginary, but I saw, and it's really quite ingenious how it all works together. And you're right, how we believe that there really is magic going on on stage.

[6:01] Crystal Skillman: Yes. And that line is very much me. There's a lot of me and Kristen, and that line is particularly me. Reality and I, we don't really get along. And of that moment, she reaches out, pulls down, and you're like, uh, sudden lights change. It's like she's done this light switch, which pays off in the story later, where we realize there are a lot of images that we're experiencing in the beginning that actually are about what Kristen is avoiding or trying to work through with the true belief that magic does work. And we are all there for Jenny, which is something she tells us, and we all become a part of that goal. As it is revealed that Jenny actually suffered a hate crime the night before. So, like that only comes about 20 minutes in, and it's very in the way I wrote it.

It took a bit of time, and that's why we had to workshop it with people to watch them, like work with the designers, what that meant. We did a lot of private workshopping because timing-wise, it means a lot because there's two different kinds of audience members that are in that theater. One is, oh my gosh, she's talking to me. I thought this was like a serious show. Like, okay, I guess it's funny. I thought it was going to be meteor. And then there's another audience member that's like, oh my gosh, it's talking to me. This is so much fun. I was worried that it was gonna be really sad. And though, like, and then they meet about 20 minutes in in the show, and then we're kind of married into that because at this point, it's not like something we've ever seen before.

I think one of the cool things, which I didn't realize is much until this version in which we got to live more in and revisit the design in a new way, just if you'll stage some new things. It almost has a Fellini-like feel to it because the theater is kind of empty. We acknowledge, why is that goes light on the corner? That's interesting. And then, so there's no set, so to speak, that the theater itself kind of is the set, and we in a way, as the audience are kind of part of that too because she's brought us there and she tells us that. So I think the idea of exploring Kristen's mindscape and how that's revealed comes out in this way in a way that a lot of people use the word unique or that they haven't seen something like this before.

[8:11] Crystal Skillman: Yes. And so I think that that's really fun too. And especially for us that we also love audio, like on Broadway Podcast Network with our podcasts, or I think there is something fun about the show or exciting about the show's theatricality that's unusual for a solo show. And in fact, actually, it's interesting that this is in the midst of a few interesting unique solo shows that are doing things in different ways. Feel very theatrical, even though it's one person.

[8:40] Jeryl Brunner: Yes, yes, it's so multi-layered. I'm very curious about the story of the two women and their connection. It's so beautifully told, and then how magic is woven in. Are you comfortable sharing what inspired this particular story? I know you said there was another play beforehand, but what was it about this particular story that made you feel I have to write it? Is it based on your experiences or experiences of someone you know?

[9:18] Crystal Skillman: There are experiences from my life in the play, for sure, and relationships I've had in the past. This direct story of Jenny and Kristen, and it's so rich. Yes, maybe because in the details, and maybe, and so people have a hard time not believing that the exact details of the story aren't true because they're so specific. And yes, I think the only way I can describe it is maybe it's the one in terms of like being channeled through the story and seeing Kristen and Jenny so vividly. Kristen is very much a writer, she's a YA writer, very much like myself, very much of rich worlds. And so there is something almost about their relationship throughout that speaks to that YA world that speaks to fantasy, and they both have a love of fantasy and magic in that way.

So those deep connections between a writer and the creative spark that is also an activist in this piece that becomes clearer in this version, and how they inspire each other. One of my favorite lines is when Jenny says, and you know, it's a solo actor doing it, so she plays both Kristen and Jenny. But when Jenny says, as long as you write, you'll always have an audience of me. And I think that has been a part of my life. That the people that I deeply love and have been with, you know, that's part of that relationship, is the sharing the fiction and then having someone hear it. And so that strong bond, and that's a part of the other part of the story you follow is that as Kristen is finding some success with her magical book, The Magician's Magician, the YA series, in which there are two boys falling in love with magic, and in magical with actual magic ways.

And you know, I think that there's I what I hope is that anyone can see themselves in the play because then also we have heterosexual couples represented by the grandparents she speaks about. Her mom, there's issues there. I actually know because I've written some of the story after what happens to Kristen, but her dad left because he was actually gay and kind of realized it in his relationship with the mom. It's not something explored here, but it kind of leaves under mysterious ways, and her mom was upset and takes it out a bit on Kristen, which I think is why. So there's a rich tapestry there. Yeah, I think it's just that the thing with a rich fiction. Now, in terms of some of the details of their actual relationship, the estrangement of parents, when I began to develop the script, Jesse D. Hill has been absolutely instrumental in sharing a bit of her own life as well that fused with this fiction.

And she was just always so great about grounding us in sort of like I wrote this play to be powerful and send a message and be a piece to talk about, but not in a preachy way because you go through the experience. So, you know, you want to fight for this kind of love and have those discussions, you know, or it's towards the queer community and to already when you feel like good this is being talked about. Like I'm glad that you know, this can go across the country and play in Texas as well as New York and these kinds of things where it might be even more needed, you know, to be quite honest. Especially at this moment in time. So I think that Jesse's always been great about grounding us in, and several people who've commented, given feedback on the script about how big the events of the play are, how grounded they are to real life, how devastating it is to have a parent kind of accept you, but not accept you, like how hard it is to have that with your parents.

But then Jenny's parents completely accept her, but Kristen doesn't have that, and those feelings within the self, the differences between Indiana where Kristen grew up and New York, and then also there's several moments in the script where Kristen feels portrayed by New York City, and that's hard because to her it's this haven, this wonderful place that white be anarchy of when she grew up in Indiana. So it also weaves in talking about the complexity of the problems in America and the complexity of when we say, we're gonna debate something when we have absurd conversations about, you know, yes, I believe this, you believe that, we, you know, you know, it's a but there are universal truths, and I think that the play is written from the place of this is a universal truth. And yes, and there's joy in that.

[14:01] Crystal Skillman: And yes, there's joy. There's a lot of joy. What would you say? What is the message? What would you say you would love people to come away from to say Open?

[14:15] Crystal Skillman: I would love when they leave the theater. And I have seen this, and it isn't just the New York production. I've seen it when I've traveled out to other productions across the country. The audience to see their fellow audience members, the audience when they leave, see each other more than I think a play that didn't break the fourth wall this way.

[14:39] Crystal Skillman: Um and and I just hope that in seeing each other in a different way, it's leaving the theater in a different way as a collective, that when they go out in the world, they don't feel alone. I think that's the biggest thing. I just I just thought there's the hope in the play that also breed or going through a cathartic moment. Um the fact is that people live on, they live on with us, and those lessons are huge and we impact each other enormously. So when you take the spirit of someone with you and you put it into the world, you don't you may not see that direct change, but it is there, it is there simply by the act of that act, and it is it is what me the act of sacrifice in itself is the greatest thing that I think we can do as humans for one another when we don't just think of ourselves and we think of others.

So I think there's so much in this and a lot of Kristen, you know, I think part of that way it works in terms of the writing is we're so in Kristen's head, and we're all in our heads and we're all neurotic to some level, whether we admit it or not. Um, and so I think there's this level of Kristen is is constantly debating within herself, constantly trying to to to keep the love of her life, Jenny, but also just not deal with some of the shit she might deal with on the street, if she's overt. And just so she's keeping a private life inside herself, which is impossible because the world, as you know, will try to form you and try to make you a certain way, as opposed to you have to be an individual in the world, and that is how the world expands, and that is the purpose of our us as humans to be here. Um, and so I think she really goes from a very inner place to uh almost like a like ethereal place in the past. It's beautiful.

[16:29] Jeryl Brunner: Well, I'd love to talk about purpose. I I'd love to hear about your light leaf strikes moment when you knew you had to be an artist or the moments.

[16:39] Crystal Skillman: There um have been a few, I think, as there it's been a lot of people. Um I think my um I was uh bullied a lot. Um, and so there are two safe spaces. Um one was the theater, the community theater, and one was as I as I grew older, probably in middle school, was um the art room for photography, the dark room. And those sort of the two spaces that I felt at home and I loved. Uh it's very interesting because one is being part of a collective and putting something together, and it's very people focused. And the dark room is is actually pretty isolated, and you're kind of having your own relationship with the art, and it's uh, but also it's beautiful, it's quiet and magic does happen. All of a sudden, you put some chemicals, and I'm talking old school photography because that's what I loved, and I I still do, and um, you know, so that tactileness of seeing something emerge in the dark, and did you capture it correctly and what that meant?

Um, you know, pre-digital was kind of a lot more interesting, although uh, you know, you can do more things with digital. So I think um there was things were always as I was going forward, it was like, who's gonna win out? And I wasn't really sure. I realized that I'm not an actor, I didn't know you could write plays because I never met a living playwright. So technically, even though I was in any one coal is well, my favorite, you said, well, I didn't meet Sandheim when he was alive. I didn't, you know, I just did the idea that these guys were around or that that's what you could do, uh, was so and then Shakespeare's not here. So, like, you know, and then I again it was mostly male, right? I don't even think I wasn't in a female written play until Top Girls in College. And that was a very transformative moment, getting to know Carl Churchill's work. And I was like, that's so cool.

[18:20] Jeryl Brunner: Where did you get a college?

[18:22] Crystal Skillman: Oh, I went to art school in both cases. I started out. So basically, long story short, uh, the in terms of the war of the arts. I decided I'm not, I knew I wasn't an actor. So I was like, okay, so visual arts and this will be my jam. So I went to Arkward Art School and study, I had to have a full background in foundational art. I could draw, I could paint, I could sculpt, you can do it all. Um, and uh, and I got what I needed in a prears and Parsons had always wanted me. So I said, you know what, this is the city moment, let me go. And so I started at Parcel School Design and Photography. And that was where I I got I took um uh a playwrighting course by Edward Alm Baker, who um uh did a lot of work at the new school.

I'm sorry, at the at the ensemble studio theater. So I I I went to Ensemble Studio Theater and I said, Oh, can I do an internship? And so all of my minor ended up being writing in theater and live poetry and these internships. And through these internships, I was meeting other theater people. And at the same time, the works I was doing were pretty installation-based. And so they went from well, walking into a room where there's you open a box and there's family photos in it, and there's ornaments with photos on it from like pieces of trees coming out. Like it was like like a leftover Christmas, and there's like a whole story. And then those stories became scripts. And then I started writing dialogue.

And then I started like performing in them. And like, or I was there in them and like carpet dem is not a Japanese fish. I played a traumatized pluminating cookies and milk, and there was a breakup happening inside my head, and that was recorded on audio, but it wasn't we didn't I didn't have digital, so it was on a tape. I had edited a tape. Um so like all these things were happening, and it was, and then so someone saw me perform that little thing and from my my ensemble studio theater and also circle rep was a Lippard Wilson's theater. I also was interning there in the last year. And uh a Mimi Kramer, a critic for the New Yorker, happened to come. Like, like it was a fun time. It was a time where it was a time where like we just I don't know, I just didn't feel the hierarchy as much.

People would go to CBGBs and they're doing crazy shit and it was performative stuff. And she grabbed me and she said, 'Oh my god, this play.' She's like, You're this is a play. She's like, You're a play playwright. And I was like, 'What's a playwright? ' Like, I just didn't know what that was. I mean, I I mean, again, I was seeing and supporting productions, I just didn't know. And so then they put me in when Young Globe was forming, I got put into this this playwriting group, and I kind of took off from there. And then the longer journey came around, um, related my craft and full-length playwriting because I didn't do a traditional MFA writing for Rand that took a lot more time of with workshopping, writing for actors.

Um, but it was more rewarding because I would never, at least now looking back, I never believed in, oh, you write the script and you just send it and you just pray, or you you wait for someone to to validate you because I knew that making and showing from the beginning, I knew that that was important. And so I've just continued to do that.

[21:28] Jeryl Brunner: That's unbelievable. I mean, that's like magic. I mean, but you made it happen. That all these, I mean, I love that it was so that you literally kind of fell into it that somebody discovered you. Like that was your Schwab's. But um, do you stay in touch with that critic?

[21:48] Crystal Skillman: That right I should look her up. Um during that time in my life, uh, I was in rooms with Austin Pendleton because he became the artistic director uh for a very hot second. He's done everything.

[22:00] Jeryl Brunner: Tell me about the Rocket Men, which is coming out and and is gonna be all over the country. What is The Rocket Men about? What inspired the play?

[22:09] Crystal Skillman: I was in Alabama. Um my friend Hugh Long had brought me out to Athens University because they were doing a production of my play. Keith did he wanted uh to me to some player in workshops, and that's my a love letter to cosplay players, um, which is very much my comic book uh Chromicon kind of like. And um, so I was out there and then I went what you do, I did what you do around Huntsville, you go to the US Space and Rocketry Center, and while there, I I had heard of Von Braun, I heard of Operation Paper Gun, but I got this book um called The Rocket Tea that really went in detail about that story from um of uh immigrating over, so to speak, or selling our their V2 secrets to as uh as barter to get here in secret.

And then as I started to kind of find out on factor layers of the story, I'm realizing, oh, these are the men that were instrumental in sending us to the moon, and then I realized, oh, they really are involved, not just involved with World War II and Rocket Treat, but during a war, um, you know, our Nazis. Not every single member of the team was a direct Nazis, I think worked for the Nazi Party um in one way or the other. That um Ken Moon, where those rockets were V1 and V2 were um pioneered, uh become our uh the basis of our Rocket program. And then I followed the story of how accepted they were in Hotspiel and also just the complexity of the story itself. So I said, there's something here.

How can I hold both things in my hands? This these disturbing facts, but also a new life in the South, and what does that mean? And also at a time where there's Jim Crow law sort of going on and he and and the Germans are being accepted. So those complexities, that's where the idea came out as I started to dig, and I definitely was aware that slave labor and um disturbing things were were done in World War II to make those rockets at several secret camps, not just um Pen Noons. Um, but the more I dug in the story, it it's just the layers between so intense and so horrific as in terms of you know how this tech was made or bound. And I realized that that's what the play is about. It's about how the rockets were made and how there's layers to these stories in such a complex way.

So it's really a play between um three main characters, um, because I was like, well, how is this different than uh a book? And I realized that um uh 13 years younger, uh uh one of the few Germans brought over that's not a part of Operational Paperclippy team, very close with me bee, and I said, What is this story? If he's a part of Project Horizon however his point of view at least in the version of my play from what I've researched uh there's enough indication it is not the same that that von bronze would be now von Braun has many faces and so um so part of it is unmasking that so I said let me follow this relationship and how do I also make it clear that the story is actually not about either of them in many ways it's about the people that actually made the rockets this is why they're played by women in the last um uh few months of the project about women from concentration camps were brought in um at the very end and out of desperation to be working on those rockets specifically at Dora is the camp that I I specifically reference and uh we go into so there are layers and layers of the play that's a very breaking almost documentary kind of playful style in the beginning that keeps revealing itself um which is just something that I like to do in theater because I just think if we're live you know how is it how are we peeling things back and my work is typically non-naturalistic but then I will um dump us into naturalistic scenes like then it surprises us how we go and where we go so I wanted to spark conversation about that and I also want to spark conversation that was complex and said but going to the moon and space exploration is important especially the time of climate crisis especially in time of this planet is is I do not know if we can more scorre at this point especially with everything going on.

So space exploration um uh uh is incredibly important to deal with scarcity to dealing with the ICEA of equality, which is why when we see Katy Perry going and we have these stories, now we get really interesting. Okay, well, who gets to go? Like who's gonna actually be saved? What does that mean? So then we have entitlement, we have classism, we have all these things baked into the questions of this play. And I guess the last thing that intrigued me while I was working on the play is the six uh six women play play the men, they step into the roads as a very madman-like vibe when they step into these rules. The other thing was um, you know, uh they that surprised me. One awares the story, nobody cared about going to the moon.

They all wanted to go to Mars because they wanted truest space exploration, they wanted to build space stations, they want so the original way they this German team wanted to get to the moon was actually tied to a space station that if actually that was pursued, um, we would not be behind as behind as we are today. Um, so that's just fascinating. And that's something that that um if you follow videos of these men later in life, they consistently talk about Mars when they were at part of the Rocket Center in Berlin, they consistently talk it was just this making science fiction a reality thing. And so it it's it's also even though we're holding two things in our hands that they did accomplish going to the moon, many of them felt proud of that, but also that which is complex, right?

Former non-I mean, quote, if we can't see, but also they fail, they feel like they failed because the space program shortly after gets pretty tanked under Nixon. Um, and so they they don't so for all his glory and charisma and uh salesmanship that uh brilliant, but salesmen and then a lot of layers to be beat. We never apologized and never actually owned how the rack is were made himself. Um at the very end of his life, he does die. Um without achieving what what he they thought they would achieve. Um so it's it's it's and and and the last part of the play slides into a place that very clearly um takes him to task now or with her what he's done.

[28:20] Jeryl Brunner: Oh, I can't wait to see it. Well, Crystal, it's just such a gift to have you on the show. Thank you so much for coming on.

[28:25] Crystal Skillman: Thank you so much for having me.

[28:29] Jeryl Brunner: You're welcome.

[28:32] Jeryl Brunner: It happened to the greats, it still happens every day when lightning strike is the moment you know. The theme song was written by Tom McGovern. This episode was edited by Sarah Goodman and produced by Anna Strout.

[28:49] Jeryl Brunner: Lightning strikes.