"It feels like its own kind of little miracle, what was able to be achieved here"—Playwright Tony Meneses on the ANPF

With playwright Tony Meneses’ play “Ashes from a Great Fire”, audiences are seeing both the conception as well as the birth of a new play: when Meneses was contacted by T2 Artistic Director Robert Ford about participating in ANPF, he had an idea and an outline for a new play—but that was about it. Within a week, he had nearly doubled the length of his play. He’s clearly been very, very busy.

Playwright Tony Meneses

Meneses was born in Guadalajara, Mexico and raised in Albuquerque and Dallas. His plays include “Guadalupe in the Guest Room”, “The Women of Padilla”, “twenty50”, “The Hombres”, and “El Borracho”. He is an alumnus of the Soho Rep. Writer/Director Lab, Ars Nova Play Group, Sundance Institute Playwrights Retreat at Ucross Foundation, The Playwrights Realm Writing Fellowship, and Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Youngblood, and his work has been previously developed at the Lark Play Development Center Playwrights’ Week, Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s The Ground Floor, Denver Center for the Performing Arts Theatre Company’s Colorado New Play Summit, The Old Globe’s Powers New Voices Festival, and South Coast Repertory’s Pacific Playwrights Festival and New SCRipt Series. He is a two-time recipient of The Kennedy Center Latinx Playwriting Award, is published by Dramatists Play Service, and has been previously commissioned by Denver Center, Two River Theater, and The Juilliard School. He is currently under commission from The Old Globe and South Coast Rep. Education: The University of Texas at Austin, Iowa Playwrights Workshop, Juilliard.

The description for “Ashes” sounds deliciously mysterious: “It's been months since Lorena and her bible study group have gotten together and the world has changed around them. As they return one fateful night, Lorena has brought someone new with her—someone definitely unexpected in a space like this— and when all the group's prayers start coming true, they start to wonder what, or who, is really behind their miracles.”

Meneses closed his laptop long enough to engage in a thoughtful Q and A with us this week—and then, no doubt, got right back to work.

You had your first staged reading in front of an audience on Sunday—how did it go?

It was definitely very eventful. This is the first time I've ever heard it in front of any audience at all, not including my collaborators on our first day of rehearsal. The high pressure stakes of that I was absolutely feeling, I was totally a ball of nerves. I've never heard this in front of anybody, so who knows how this is going to go. But the little things from, you know, certain jokes that landed and people laughed—I though, ‘Thank God, check that box.’ This play is also funny, which was, of course, a goal. Seeing people lean in in certain moments, the dramatic moments, was really great. Two unexpected events that were really great was just seeing my actors key into certain things that they hadn't before. The beautiful part of all of this is seeing their discovery, along with my own discoveries along the way in the writing, but their acting discoveries are just really beautiful to behold—a certain emotion that they found in particular moments, that was just really beautiful. And then one funny anecdotal thing—some people left the play, got up in the middle of it, or even close to the beginning of it, because, I think, they were offended by it, which was not my goal to be provocative or controversial. I was writing about theology, having an active conversation with this notion of faith and our everyone's relationship to faith, whether they're subscribed to religion or not. I think it maybe pushed a button in a way that made them uncomfortable. Maybe they just not ready for this.

Let’s talk a little about what drew you to playwriting in the beginning.

I grew up on storytelling. Even now, I don't even actually think of myself as a writer, believe it or not, even though I've been doing it for so long. I think more than writing itself and the literary-ness of it was that it’s just been interest in good story, and character, specifically. I always felt like that was my DNA. Playtime for me was actually pretty sacred, because I would journal all the stories I would come up with as a kid, then be like,’One day, I'm gonna use this.’ I didn’t know why or how, but it was very ritualistic for me. Playtime was where I got to make up stories and characters and didn't reconcile until around my teenage years that, oh, maybe this is what I want to do, forever.mWhen you grow up on TVs and movies, you think TVs and movies would be the avenue to that. I was in high school, before I started doing theater, and it was around that time that I saw what theater had to offer and how creative and imaginative it was. it was this space that can only exist in that one night, sort of this one kind of thing that you get to conjure together for a night, and that felt different from movies or film so I that's when I chose that lane. I said, ‘I’m going to be a playwright,’ and here I am, still continuing to say that. It's definitely been really fulfilling and my way to express myself and express my creativity through plays.

Your other plays also lean heavily into stories about the immigrant experience—is that a strong motivating force behind your work?

Yeah, everything that I do is definitely rooted in my culture, in my given circumstances, as a human being. The thing that leads the most is the Latino/Latina point of view. No matter what I do, those characters are going to be centered, and it's going to be about them. And then if I can conflate that they're also immigrants, or from a generation of immigrants, because that's my experience—I wasn't born here. My family came to America. So I know the reality of that, the hardship of that, but also just kind of like the community that you build as a result of that, and that’s so important to me. And I also exist in a queer intersection. So that feels important, as well. And obviously, it’s just my nature as a human being to be inclusive. So though it is a Latino/Latina forward, it's also inclusive of other experiences in this world, too. So that we sort of see a meeting of charactera sometimes that we wouldn't expect to see in a narrative. And, obviously, this is something that's not seen too often, even still this day. So if I can offer just a little bit of humanity to characters that are often marginalized or misunderstood, sometimes politically, or politicized in a way, and just show that our lives exist within the same given circumstances and struggles as any other human being or any other person in this country goes through, that feels like a special thing to be able to offer as a writer.

You mentioned that Ashes From a Great Fire has some funny moments in it—is that typical for your work?

Yeah, that's another, I would say, signature thing of mine. I just feel more confidence with comedy than ever before, because it’s really just made me like intellectualize, what is funny? So I've learned now that, yes, humor has always been important to me, but now I feel like I really understand A. why it's important and B. how it works. Especially in the times that we're living in, it really feels like such a special gift to offer to make people laugh. Today, for example, to make people laugh, felt really great. Even in moments of unbelievable duress, I do find that humor always finds a weird way to sneak in sometimes. Whether we're going through grief or confusion or heartbreak, I do find that humor is there, and we either engage with it, or we don't and for me, I choose to, because I think that sort of shows the fullness of the human condition—great drama, great conflict, but I do always find levity. That's part of the human experience as well.

Let’s talk about “Ashes”. It sounds as if it was pretty bare bones your first day here.

Steph Collins, Michele Vazquez, Tony Meneses and Gabriel Frano-Kull in the rehearsal room for Meneses’ “Ashes From a Great Fire”

I keep belaboring this joke, but writing this play has been a leap of faith as much as it has been about leaps of faith. Bob reached out seven, eight weeks ago. He had seen my play ‘The Hombres’, and I think he had been a fan of mine for a little bit—I think I was in his orbit of thoughts. And he reached out, askign if I had anything, because they had an open slot. I hadn't written a play in three years. The pandemic made writing kind of difficult, writing plays specifically kind of difficult, not knowing when theater was going to be back. I said, ‘Hey, you know, I don't have anything,but would you be willing to let me write something new for you guys in this festival?’ And he was totally enthusiastic about it. I hadn't even had an outline. I just had the idea when he reached out. So then I very quickly outlined the whole play and hit the ground running. I came here, I think, with 50 pages. And now we're at 85. So even just last week, I've written like, 35 pages of work. I got a deadline, and I just—I'm more than comfortable sharing my age. I'm 38. It reminds me of being in undergrad, writing an essay, the night before. I'm still in that mode. I thought I would have outgrown that. But like there is something about having a deadline that really lights the fire.

Had the idea been kicking around your head for a while? Or did you come up with it in the in the heat of the moment?

This actually has been brewing for about 12 years. I had various junctures where I thought I was finally going to sit down and write it. And actually, it's funny, you're the only one who knows this—the title itself was actually inspired by a quote from— I was also a yoga certified teacher, and he was one of my yoga gurus, if you will, who likened religion to ashes of a great fire. That phrase was so haunting to me. I thought, ‘One day, I’ll write a play with that title.’ Sometimes, when you're keying into things as a writer, sometimes things aren't ready. I’ll think, ‘I'm literally gonna write this play,] and I'll do a full outline, which is part of my habit, my process, and maybe no more than two or three pages into something, you know that you're not ready for it. So when I tried to write it previously, I didn't get past page three. So finally, thank God, I got this opportunity, and I said, ‘I think it’s time now.’ The play deals with given circumstances in the last few years—it’s not a COVID play, but COVID is a reality of the play. It felt like this was the moment for a play about faith, and how all of us have had to contend with our relationship to faith in the last few years given everything that's happened it did feel like the right moment to have this conversation.

You have, in your background, experience with several high profile play development programs. Can you talk a little bit about what it's like, as a playwright, to have that sort of support, when you're fine tuning a play that you're writing?

I tell my students—I'm also a professor—that this is the one form of writing where you need other people. Other types of writers, novelists, journalists, you're kind of on your own writing is a lonely practice in itself. So when I start to write a play, I have to be alone. But then I have just the gift of being able to meet a community— have collaborators, actors, directors and stage managers in the room with me, especially in the development process, and later on, designers too. And that feels kind of amazing—you're not on your own, you can figure this out with other people. You get to share ideas and ask questions and be reassured when you need to be reassured that you're in the right lane. Having a development opportunity, especially for a play that literally wasn't even alive until very recently—it just feels cool that we're engaging. And I think what makes theatre so beautiful is that you have other people there to help you tell a story—because I wouldn't be interested in telling stories alone. I would never write a novel —God bless novelists— but it's just not how I want to learn about things. I think theater is absolutely, at its core, a communal and collaborative thing. So it just feels like your accountability. It's also like off, you're just you're back, you're like alright, we're all in this together. The stakes are are even for all of us. I would definitely say development is so wonderful for that reason—you're figuring something else out with other people.

How is ANPF different from some of the other programs you’ve experienced?

What I find really valuable here is that the talkback that we had after the reading today—I really enjoy a good dialogue with an audience. So it was really great to talk to the audience right after and sort of see what they were picking up on, the things that that really struck them. We definitely posed questions that I had about their interpretations of what certain elements or certain scenes were about. And I actually I did bring up like, Hey, did you all notice that people left? What do we think of that? Why do we think they left? So we had a really fun dialogue about, were these people offended and why? It was just like a really fun collective moment in real time. Kind of just like collaborating with the audience in the way that we did in the room all week. Suddenly you're collaborating and dramaturgically engaging with the play with new eyes and with audience members who hopefully were engaged and gave their candid feedback.

And as the playwright, will that feedback that inform the work that you'll do this week?

Yeah, I think so. We definitely posed questions about what I think are active mysteries that are are in the play. So there’s this calibration of how much you want to give away, how much you want the audience to not be confused, but to really think about the play, particularly the ending—the ending is a big sleight of hand that happens. So we've just heard a lot of different interpretations of ‘I think the ending meant this,’ ‘I think the ending meant that,’ and it was just like a really cool stew of different things that people took away from it. Now it's like, how much do we want to answer a little bit more? I think the thing that I'm definitely curious about is, is this play offensive at certain parts for someone who's of Christian faith, and how is that going to push their buttons? I definitely am not interested in offending, or judging, Christian characters. I don't think I was judging or making fun of anybody, but I'm interested in that dialogue. I definitely want to see how we're going to talk about that next week.

Is there anything I didn’t ask that I should have, or anything else you want to add?

It feels like its own kind of little miracle, whaat was able to be achieved here. So I just wanted to say thanks to TheatreSquared for affording me this opportunity, and for taking a risk—they didn't know what they were gonna get. It's been really special to get back to my theater writing, and I would not have been able to were it not for TheatreSquared and Bob reaching out.

Writing can be a lonely thing, because sometimes what you're doing is sort of rendering your own humanity into your work. And you wonder if people are going to understand, are they going to connect with how I feel about things in this world. So it really is cool when you’re received, because it makes you feel less lonely in the world, makes you feel that people understand what you're saying and what you're expressing and how you walk through the world. They can connect to it too, with empathy and compassion. So it just feels cool that that has been achieved with this theater, because it doesn't always happen. But it happens here.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

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