Women Processing Domestic Violence in 'Pre-Existing Condition'

0:00This is all of it on WNYC, I'm Allison Stewart in the play pre-existing condition. You meet a woman as she struggles with the fact that her boyfriend has hit her. She is questioning how a person you love can hurt you so profoundly. Others around her weigh in, the counselors at the crisis center she attends, her very busy mom, a mutual friend who apologizes for the guy, but it's not a cast of thousands. In a small theater, a few actors play the various roles, and to emphasize the universality of domestic violence, the role of the woman who is just called A is played by a rotating cast of actors of all different ages and backgrounds.

1:03When the play ran off Broadway a few years ago, that cast included Tavi Gevenson who is in her 20s, and D. D. D. O'Connell who is in her 70s. Now the play is back on stage, and A is played by Lupita Nguyango, Felipe Su, Edith Falco, and more. Playwright Marin Ireland joined me to discuss the show along with the show's director Maria Ditsia. It's running now at the Grenish House Theatre through December. And listeners, this conversation will cover domestic violence. If at any time during this conversation you need support, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE. That's 1-800-799-7233, or you can text that hotline by texting start to 8-8-7-8-8. Here's our conversation about the play, pre-existing condition.

2:06Why the title pre-existing condition? We had a long discussion, my friend and I, after seeing this show. Yeah, you know, you used to have a different title for many years of its work, which was Big Mountain, which is the first thing that is said in the play to A. It's like you have this big mountain to climb. And that was just what came up when I went to save it for the first time. That line came up and it was great. That's a working title. And then in 2017, when the Affordable Care Act was threat, under threat, there was a lot of information coming out about how before Obamacare domestic violence, among other things, including rape, things like that, would be considered a pre-existing condition by many insurance companies in many states in this country. And so you would be denied coverage or your premium would skyrocket. And before that happened, I didn't know that personally, before that was suddenly a thing

3:11in the news. And even now, if we went back to that in the foreseeable future, some states have protections against that happening again, but some do not. So there would actually still be places in this country where we consider to pre-existing condition. But it also resonated with me in terms of the fact that this play, to me, is not about this single event in somebody's life. It's about things before that in this relationship. It's about things before that in this whole system that we all live in and multiple systems we all exist in. It's about what was happening in that woman's body and mind before she even met this person and about the bigger kind of multiple systems we all exist under all the time. Real, what did you think of the piece when you read it? I learned a great deal reading it. I mean, when I read it, I was struck by the honesty of the relationships.

4:14They all felt so real to me, which is especially important. It felt because the scenes are, you know, have been kind of like on a scattergram. You know, they're just tiny little bit dip into scenes rather than seeing an entire relationship evolve over time. And so I was so impressed by how I was able to understand those relationships by just dipping into them for a few seconds. But then in terms of the content of the play and what Marin was just speaking about, I felt in hearing it that there are so many things that I wish that I knew when I was a younger woman. And that there were things that it felt so important for this play, for the words of this play, to be spoken out loud in a room for a group of people to hear together. And those are the things that struck me the most when I first read it. Marin, you've talked about your own experience with domestic violence. This is a very personal story.

5:17And did you know you wanted to approach it, to write about it? Many years ago, I had another writer friend who just suggested that I just start writing things down. And I was never thinking of it as a play until maybe like a month ago. I just thought, wow, I just thought, you know, I'll just write some things down. And I told this to Maria, it was funny. And I think it's just because my whole life has been working on new plays, mostly that what I would do is I would write down my memory or sort of abstracted version of conversations I had with people instead of writing down just notes about something, because I would think to myself, okay, it's like if you've gone through something like a medical diagnosis, you want to take notes, so you remember what was said afterwards. So instead of just writing down notes, I would write it down in conversation form. So without characters or anything, and at some point I was like, this looks like something, and then almost as a lark, I would sort of be like, let's get a few friends together

6:18and read some of this out loud and just see what it feels like. But it was always very closed. It was a long, weird process for me. And then over the years, people go, what happened with that thing? What happened with that thing? And I was like, I don't know, what is that thing? I don't even know. So it took friends, like I have some great friends like David Adjemy and Heidi Shrek, who over the years were big supporters of this as a piece. And that was what made me really see it as something more. But I never thought anybody else would ever really see it. But was it like when you heard it? That was like the most harrowing experience of my life. And luckily I know a lot of writers who, you know, were like, that's normal. You know, I was like, I, this is excruciating. How do you guys handle this? You know, because when you're an actor, you're very busy. So even though you might feel frightened or whatever when you go out on stage, you have so much to do that you don't have time to think about it. But just listening to it was, was really overwhelming for me. Maybe three. Marin, what does A think about domestic violence? What is, what is her opinion of it before it happens to her?

7:21I think that something that she says in the play is that she is realizing, first of all, that she really hasn't thought about it very much ever before. Because she certainly didn't think that it applied to her situation until the play starts. And I think it felt like, I mean, I think about when I, when I tried to personally think about, well, where else have I seen this portrayed in TV or movies or on stage? And the primary example I kept coming up with was streetcar. Which is such a classic romantic moment of it. I mean, at least till the Stella. And it's just sort of dramatic. And then they reconnect and then blanch is like, you can't stay with him. And you're like, it's such a melodramatic sort of romance kind of iconic moment.

8:25But I didn't want the play to have violence inside of it. And so I was trying to find a way to kind of figure out a way to bring the conversation about afterward, but make it a safer space to be able to kind of come into to watch something like this. And I think that to me, it's like, right, the idea is we have about it is that it happens when people are wasted, maybe there, of a sort of poor class. Maybe they, you know, it's a, it's a particular image that we, I think, collectively have. And I think that's what she's sort of coming into grips with in the beginning of the play. But what did you want to show about the differing opinions, the differing versions of someone that would be affected in the circumstance? What do you think? Like, how would all those differing versions really impact A? Oh, you mean the versions of the outside? Yeah. Yeah, I think for me, it was, there was something really interesting.

9:29Something to me about, especially placing us in the point of view of A, where we don't know what scene is happening next. We don't know which character this is for sure. We're not sure who we're being talked to by, at the very beginning of each scene. There aren't a lot of indicators. And so for me, it was a little bit in that way as something that says near the end of the play about like, good things and bad things start to sound the same. So it's a little bit for me of creating that sense of confusion and a little bit like, is this a safe person, is this a dangerous person? Where am I in this? Is this person my friend? Is this person going to turn on me in a second? And to me, that is a little bit of experiencing the world after a traumatic event where she says something about, you know, let's like a piano fell on my head one day. It's that feeling of like, could this conversation at any point sort of turn on me and the landmines kind of in that there's there was a phrase that is on the website that was brought

10:31up just by one of our consultants, which is about the everyday and dignities of the aftermath of this thing, which I think came up for us a lot then in conversations where it is a little bit of that. You think you're in a conversation with a friend and then they say something and you sort of feel like you went through the looking glass and suddenly the world is sort of your perspective on everything has changed, but the world around you has not. So suddenly you're seeing everything kind of refracted differently. My guess are Maria Dizia and Marin Ireland. We're talking about pre-existing condition. Maria, was the plan always going to be that you would perform in the show? Yes, it was. It moved like in and out because I had done a reading of the play and I expressed to Marin how much I love to work and that I wanted to be a part of it. And then Marin mentioned that she might be interested in having me direct the production. And I said, you probably should talk to some other directors first before you make that

11:34decision. You get a big smile while you're talking. Yeah, I heard her smile. I mean, I heard her laugh. And so then as the conversation about directing took over, the acting kind of faded into the background because we did sort of think it's one thing. I had made a short film where I directed myself, but it's another thing entirely to try to direct to yourself in a play. But then Marin was actually very adamant about me being a part of it, which I really appreciated. Because I think as a director it's hard to advocate yourself, advocate for yourself to be the star. To be clear though, what Marie is not saying is that when I asked her about directing it, I said, this could only happen if we can absolutely rotate the A's because you have to be in it. But I think you would have to build the show on another actor before you could step into it. And I was like, so you can only direct it if you can also be in it for sure because that

12:38was her work in the meeting. Yes, she can't say that, but I can. Yes, that's true. And so I mean, I have been in the position before of replacing an actor. And I also had the really great experience of stepping in for Heidi Shrek in her play while the Constitution means to me. And on both occasions, I actually really loved the experience. I loved being able to see what someone else did with a role and for me to use their work as a foundation for my own. I think it's so interesting. And so many other disciplines were really able to stand on each other's shoulders in that way. I think someone's research and then build on it. And I think in acting, you're obviously, you know, people study and learn from what

13:41people have done in the past, but not necessarily really at the same time in that way, you know, and to really be able to take someone else's work as a document and then elaborate on it. So that was an incredible part of this process to share it with other women and to learn from them. And it's so much for you, what a person wants to do when they become an actor, right, is to get as to learn as much as you can about the human experience and to see things through other people's eyes. And so it has really been an incredible thing to get to see the way other people interpret this part and to take that on and for each of us to add our own understanding to it makes it feel that it really is, you know, it's as that the part becomes as full as it can be as each iteration builds on another. It's in the, when you, the woman playing A has a script, she's holding a script, the

14:45other actors are not. Is that part of the process? Is that a realistic thing? Can you have five different actors playing the lead? It was something for me, honestly, when we saw the reading, when I, we did the reading with Maria and I remember thinking, you know, this play could be done with four people just sitting in chairs. It could be done. I don't know if it needs to be fully staged. Like it was an idea that we came up with where it was like, maybe people just holding books. That's fine. That would be fine to me. And then as we discussed the idea of rotating, it was absolutely like, well, you know, we're asking somebody to step in for maybe a few shows or a week at a time. We, honestly, for me, have, you know, as an actor myself, I was like, I want to make this sort of as easy as possible on actresses, actors to be able to say yes to this and to be able to take on such a difficult perhaps task. And it became something that, you know, we were working on the dramaturgy of all the way through our rehearsal process and trying to find a way to, it makes it feel to me like

15:47somebody's enacting a ritual that sort of is passing along and it became very, very powerful to us to see, you know, that character sort of holding something very tightly. But also I think there's something about it that makes me feel like she is the actress herself. Like I feel very much like, oh, she's being cared for because then I don't worry about her as much. She can just sort of take refuge in this, this item, this totem that she's holding onto. It's a really sweet little family, they all kind of, they all talk to each other, they hang out with each other, they sort of, they watch each other's rehearsals. That's interesting. It's a really beautiful thing that I remember Tatiana saying, she was like, I always had this dream about Tatiana Maslani, it was the first A we had perform. And she was just like, it was always a fantasy of mine to be able to share a role with actresses like this. And she would come and watch the put in rehearsals with Julia and Maria would be there. And everyone would sort of talk to each other, Dee's been in and out all the time throughout just to kind of share this experience as opposed to think of it like.

16:48And the next one is, it's very much a shared, lovely little community that's really unique to my experience at the end of the year. I can see that Maria is sort of on the move. She's got somebody doing your hair and checking out. So you're about to leave us. Or I'll let you go. And if you need to go, please, please go ahead. Yeah, of course. Thank you. I'll be like, oh, go ahead. Something my producer noticed when she saw the show, Jordan said that her, the audience was very, very emotional. When I saw the show, it was a very thoughtful. There wasn't a lot of crying. Jordan said there was a lot of crying at her, her show. How do you feel seeing people have all the different experiences? Yes, it's something that I feel very fortunate that I got to experience those different audiences first as a director and then later as a performer because as a performer, even though it's a very intimate space, you really can't see past the first row because of the lighting.

17:52And as a director, I was able to see, it's a really beautiful thing about doing theater is that there are 60 people in a room and 60 people come to a consensus about how they're going to behave in that room. And it's a really interesting, amazing thing to see that I don't totally understand how it happens. But what I was able to feel is that there were very emotional audiences sometimes, sometimes they were very quiet and it feels either respectful to what's going on or actually it's strange that they're experiencing big deal of stress and not quite for, and what I was able to see is that that's true. I mean, that's how we experience big events like that is that some of us are able to release some of us go into a more intellectual place and think about it.

18:53And what I was able to see is that the audiences were never receiving from the production and they were never bored by it. They're always very engaged in a different way. And so something that I shared with the actors is that there was one particular time the audience was very quiet, but I saw someone having a very emotional response in front of me. But because I feel like that particular audience had decided we're going to be quieter, be didn't necessarily feel permission to do that more. But that, something I shared with the actors is that it is reaching the audience no matter what you're hearing from people locally. And it's different every night. And I've certainly identified with that very much in experiences of grief that sometimes I, you know, you feel like you're able to express it really fully with your whole body and other times. It's just as deep and sincere, but it's something that kind of feels hidden.

19:55So, you know, it's very interesting. Marron, what's, Marron? What is one thing you like, you would like people to talk about after they see the show they got for coffee, ice cream, whatever, what would you like them to talk about? Hmm, that's an interesting question. Usually I feel like, you know, my work finished a little while ago, so I'm sort of just interested in whatever anybody has to talk about about it. But I guess, you know, I'm interested in how people receive sort of the open-ended elements of the show. I'm interested in them trying to sort of answer the questions that are posed in the show for themselves. I'm, I think I told Maria a lot, like I really, there are a lot of things that I am grateful are being kind of expressed out loud in a space and maybe people will hear things before

20:58they need to hear, they might have otherwise needed to hear something. Maybe then after they meet somebody who's gone through something, they'll have a different different words or a different language to share as a result of something they heard. I, I think there's a lot of questions raised in the show and so that's sort of, I think I, I, it would be nice to me if people were able to sort of discuss their own thoughts about those things. That was my conversation with playwright Marin Ireland and director Maria Dizia. Pre-existing condition runs at Greenwich House Theater through December 19th. And that's all of it for today. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you. I'll meet you back here next time.