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1.  What was your first play and what was the inspiration for it?

Something you Might Want at the 2002 SF Fringe Festival was Catchy Name¡¯s first production.  Will Dunne presented a method of generating character-based drama in his workshops.  He was a big fan of Mamet¡¯s Glenngary Glenross.  I extended Will¡¯s theory, presenting utterly self-centered characters.  This play is the model for all other plays I¡¯ve done. 

2. Is there any co-relation between writing plays and engineering?

Intuitive is the easiest, most productive, and the most fun mode of writing.  But my intuition goes on vacation and so I have systematic methods for building frameworks of dramatic events that sometimes works or even accidentally discovers new dramatic possibilities or just asks important questions that demand dramatic solutions.  When my intuition returns, it has some more room to play.  More stepping stones. 

3. Your first plays were produced for the San Francisco Fringe Festival.  How were they received.  What kind of audiences did they get?

The Fringe is great.  Audiences are eager for experimentation.  Great sense of humor and tragedy.  Very supportive and they encouraged me to continue the exploration.  Couldn¡¯t have done it without them. 

4.  Some of your most recent plays have been extensions of the Fringe plays.  What was it like to revisit them, after a bit of time?

Converting to full-length plays is an opportunity to make a bigger play, which is what the company wants to do.  Make bigger drama. 

5.  Are most of your plays personal?

Corned Beef has an autobiographical kernel.  By now, though, all the other characters exist in stock within the company.  That¡¯s because the plays share characters and because we have continuity in the company with Belle and Rob and Doug.  All I have to do is invent excruciating experiences for them, on stage, before the eyes of the eager theatre-goer. 

6.  What makes a good play?

That¡¯s easy.  Either one that completely assuages our world-view so that we can emerge from the theatre pleased with ourselves, as if we had just enjoyed a remarkable culinary pleasure, or a play that overturns our world-view, breaking every equation, emerging from the theatre as if we had just landed on another planet. 

That's all for now.  Come to the World Premiere of Jim's newest play in October.

   Yours,

       Doug Marshall