Interview: Playwright Topher Payne Talks GREETINGS FRIEND YOUR KIND ASSISTANCE IS REQUIRED at Georgia Ensemble Theatre

Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Atlanta playwright Topher Payne about his new show, Greetings Friend Your Kind Assistance is Required, premiering at Georgia Ensemble Theatre on January 5 and running through the 22nd. A fun and quirky guy, Topher was a delight to talk to, and I'm looking forward to seeing what kinds of conversations Greetings Friend Your Kind Assistance is Required will spark. Without further ado, Topher Payne!

GRACIE: How'd you get interested in theater and playwriting especially?

TOPHER: I grew up in a small town in Mississippi called Kosciusko, and there was no community theater or anything like that but the children's program in the Methodist church that I grew up in did performances. So that's where I really fell in love with it. And just with the understanding of how much more impactful a story is when you see it. And so I caught that bug and unfortunately it just never went away. So I wrote my first play when I was seventeen. It was not very good, but the next one was a little bit better and so twenty years down the road, I'm still trying to get a little bit better each time. And I came to it when I was nineteen and started just showing up at the doorsteps of theaters and refusing to leave. And so I stage managed, and I built sets, and I painted, and I sewed costumes, and just used any opportunity I could to just see work happening and contributed any way I could. That built some really wonderful and valuable relationships as I continued to hone my own work as a playwright and in that, I found my home.

GRACIE: Mmm. Tell me a little bit about Greetings Friend Your Kind Assistance is Required.

TOPHER: It is inspired by the spam emails that you get from a foreign prince that just needs some help with some money. And as all of my stuff tends to come out of an odd what if, the what if with that is: what if that email were true, and what if there really is the beleaguered prince of a country you've never heard of that just needs your help, and what if the person he made contact with was a retired American school teacher. She doesn't have the money to help him, but she wants to be helpful so she decided to fly over there and see if she can sort things out.

I am so intrigued by this idea. I think especially by observing my parents as they move into their mid-60s, and all my aunts and uncles who are now all in their 60's and 70's. The first third of your life is really when you're under the thumb of everybody else. Whether it's a teacher, or a parent, or a member of the clergy, someone is monitoring your every move. So that's act one, and act two of your life is when you're responsible for other people. Either in a marriage or relationship, or if you have children of your own, and then whatever career you pursue. You have a responsibility to those people. And then the third act of your life is all yours. I don't see a lot of stories that celebrate the freedom that accompanies maturity. We hear a lot of stories about the downside of growing older, and we don't really see a celebration of that. And I'm all like, dang, now that doesn't give you much to look forward to, does it? So I wanted to tell the story of Rhonda and her best friend Marybeth, who are both approaching 70, and are given the greatest adventure of their lives. The thing that makes that possible is them being unafraid of the wide range of possibilities available to them. And not letting fear drive their decisions. And that put me on a very personal level with those characters. And then I ended up writing the play over the course of 2016, and the story I was writing about how dangerous it is to let fear drive your decisions became a much larger story.

GRACIE: Ya, I bet it kinda took on a life of its own.

TOPHER: It really, really did. I had conversations with Shannon Eubanks, my director, back when we were still doing workshops in the summer. We knew when the show would be scheduled, and we knew that the show would be taking place in the three weeks leading up to the inauguration. And nobody was neutral about how they felt about that. Everyone had very strong feelings. And I remember saying to her, "The responsibility that we have of knowing that we are telling a story to people who a good third of our audience, no matter what happens, is going to think the world is ending. No matter what." Knowing that that was where the head stays and where the hearts of our audience were going to be six months down the road absolutely influenced what I considered important in this story. The major messages are not making decisions based in fear, and that the only way you come out on the other side of anything is being willing to communicate with people who see the world differently. I wish I were as smart and brave as my characters! That really was the thing I needed to learn in this. It's so exciting to me, after a very very fractious year leading up to this, that the first statement I get the opportunity to make as an artist in 2017 is something that supports how brave kindness truly is - how bold and the level of courage that it takes to approach the world with a kind heart. That is not a passive action, but takes a tremendous amount of strength. For that to be the first thing that I get to have a conversation with an audience about in 2017 is such a blessing and such a gift.

GRACIE: So, what is the best thing about being a playwright?

TOPHER: The best thing about being a playwright is when something is confusing to me. When there's a thought that won't leave my head. I have a venue to be able to present that question to an audience and spark a conversation about something that I'm wrestling with. That's the beautiful thing about live performance, because the storytellers are right there breathing the same air you are. We're all in this together, and so it becomes a community experience. The playwright is in the position to facilitate those things.

GRACIE: Ya, definitely. I wanted to talk about Atlanta a little bit too. What brought you here, and what do you find in the Atlanta theater community that keeps you here?

TOPHER: What brought me here was, coming from Mississippi, I think for a lot of southern artists coming from smaller towns and smaller cities, Atlanta is seen as like the big shining star and this is actually where I can make a career as an artist. I know a lot of people come here for a few years and develop themselves artistically and build up a resume and then it's on to the next thing. But what kept me here was this slow realization of the fact that a community cannot reach its full potential if its most experienced and fervently devoted artists are constantly moving on to another market.

So I started to develop this theory that Atlanta could be a home base for a nation-wide or world-wide career as an artist. I believe Atlanta can be great. I believe that we already have the talent in place to be deserving of a nation-wide reputation as an incubator of great American theater. And we just have to keep banging the drum until people take proper notice of that. When that happens, I want to be here for it, rather than being an alum. And there's a lot of honor in being an alum of that experience, but I want to be a working Atlanta artist when the world takes notice of what we're up to.

GRACIE: As a playwright, but also wearing the actor or director hat at different times, how does that work for you? Would you ever act in one of your own plays?

TOPHER: It's just less interesting to me. As a writer, I can always think of an actor whose work I like better than my own. My impulse as an actor, and this year in particular, it was really instructive because I committed to writing Greetings Friend long before I was cast in the production of On the Verge that just went up at Georgia Ensemble in November. OTV was my first time back on the stage in a little while, and it was a reminder with Greetings Friend, which is a very language heavy play, with so much word play... it's a story about the delight of miscommunication, so doing OTV which is a very dense script, made me so compassionate to my actors in Greetings Friend. I didn't change a single word because of it, but I did have much more compassion because I know it's hard to learn but you still have to learn it.

I try to direct at least once a year because it's important for me to exercise those muscles and maintain contact with all sides of production and I do believe that makes me a better writer. When I sit down to discuss a world premier, from the first meeting I can tell you this is going to be a costume-heavy show, or this is going to be a props heavy show. And so I can consider aspects of not just my play, but their production. And I think that makes all of those years that I spent stitching in costume shops and hanging lights and building sets ended up serving me very well because I personally don't get lost in the world of my play to the extent that I forget that it's a play. Eventually people are going to have to put this together. Vision still has to be budgeted! It's the advice I do give to early career playwrights is, "Get into a theater and stay there." The work that we do as writers by its nature tends to be done in isolation. We sit by ourselves and create our little world. It is so important for writers to understand the craft of theater, even if that means all you're doing is ushering at a show so you're seeing theater. But particularly when things are going well for you, it can be tricky finding time to leave the helm. Jumping in and volunteering on a day of scene painting at a theater or helping build props ... being involved in the craft of theater-making itself is immensely helpful and immensely inspirational for a playwright. That's always my advice is make sure you get to a theater and you find a way to stay there. Because you learn not just from your betters but also from those who took a risk that didn't pay off or failed to take a risk and that's why they had no... The more you know about the business you're in, the better you'll be in your job. That's certainly not unique to theater, but it's hella true about theater!

GRACIE: What does 2017 hold for you?

TOPHER: I am at work on a new script that I started last year toying with and then really starting to find my rhythm with in the last few months. It's sort of a baby shower that descends into the bowels of hell. I have discovered in conversations with the women I love, that no one actually enjoys the experience of a baby shower. Everyone is kind of there against their own will and that really got my imagination firing off on what a great environment to be able to have a story that is exclusively about women and ends up being kind of an exploration of women right now. There is a reason that "The Women" written in 1939 still gets productions now, and I think it's because of that intent focus on female friendships and combative relationships among women. I feel like we shouldn't have to wait 100 years to see another show that explores in that kind of detail and wit and intelligence. It's kind of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf" at a baby shower. It's like when you see "August Osage County" and it's like (because I do see that show as more of a comedy, which probably says more about me than about the show) but the delight of seeing a show and you're just wondering how bad this is going to get. I've never written one of those and I really really want to! So, working on that and I've got a couple of other possibilities for films that will come out in the coming year - very excited about that!

And I just heard a rumor from my publishers at Sam French that we may be seeing a production of one of my shows this season in Atlanta. It's so weird now because for years and years, I did my own negotiations, and now with an agent and a publisher, they are usually really far along in the conversation before I even know the conversation's taking place. All of this is set up for me to be able to focus on creating and let other people handle the business side of it, which is amazing. But for the control freak side of myself, it's just hell.

GRACIE: Haha, I'm looking forward to seeing more from you soon! To wrap up, I thought it would be fun to ask a couple of silly questions. What fruit or vegetable best matches your personality and why?

TOPHER: A tomato. There's something distinctly southern about it. People never know whether to call it a fruit or a vegetable and I kind of like its loose ill-defined existence in a category of its own. As a playwright who struggles to be able to say what genre my plays are, I feel the tomato's pain! People try to make you be one thing. And also, you can contribute tomatoes in the mix into so many things, it's a welcome addition in so many different types of cuisine, so I like its adaptability.

GRACIE: If you could have a super power, what would it be?

TOPHER: I always say, if I could magically get one additional hour in a day that no one else has, I would get so much more done! I would like to be able to have a 13 o'clock that no one else has, and I swear I could get caught up on everything if I could just have 13 o'clock! But when nobody can call you and you can't get onto Facebook.

GRACIE: And finally, describe Greetings in one or two words.

TOPHER: Goofy and heartfelt

GRACIE: Well that's all the questions I have. I look forward to seeing the play soon!

TOPHER: Oh I hope you will. It's a wonderful production and I'm just so impressed with this team.

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For more information or to buy tickets, visit http://get.org/greetings-friend-your-kind-assistance-is-required/.

Directed by Shannon Eubanks, the cast of Greetings Friend Your Kind Assistance is Required consists of Brenda Porter, Karen Howell, CristIan Gonzalez, Skye Passmore, Parris Sarter, Stacy Melich, and Jef Holbrook.

The Georgia Ensemble Theatre and Conservatory provides quality theatre productions and arts education to the north metro Atlanta area. The Company annually produces five mainstage productions, attended by more than 30,000 patrons, as well as school tours, the new FamilyStage series, and year-round classes for all ages.