We are finally on the Trail! With a yoke of oxen, 10 boxes of bullets, 125 lbs. of food, 2 spare sets of clothing and a spare wheel thanks to XAVID PRETZER, JONATHAN ZUCKER, JESSICA ZIEGLER, DANIEL RIKER, AMANDA BRADLEY, and JONATHAN RUBIN – who will all be receiving their picture of themselves as a Pioneer over the next few days, so watch this space.
Nothing too eventful today, though Frank Salsa is already getting on Ol’ Hank McGuffin’s nerves. But on the trail, no news is good news, right? It gives us time to peek behind the scenes for the interview below with The Oregon Trail playwright Bekah Brunstetter!
TODAY’S REWARD
Anyone who donates today will have an original ‘MUMDOODLE’ drawn by THE OREGON TRAIL Scenic Charge BRITNEY MONGOLD, and then posted to FB! You can even help suggest a prompt for your Doodle! This is an exclusive for TODAY only, so donate now and help keep our Pioneers in good spirits.
Bekah Brunstetter, photo by Elisabeth Caren
How did you start writing THE OREGON TRAIL?
I actually started writing in in grad school, which was… dear God…EIGHT YEARS AGO? It started out as just a scene. A contemporary girl, struggling with a sadness that she could not name, finding herself on a piece of what used to be the Oregon Trail, interacting with a ghost, and finding a new perspective on life. I then revisited the idea much later, when I received a fellowship from the Lark, the New York New Voices fellowship – it’s designed to give a playwright a partial living stipend, so that they can really take the time and research the world of a play, not just frantically write it. The world of the play – and its inherent question: what is this sadness we feel as current folk, and where does it come from? – was still nagging at me. So I picked it back up, and was happy to have the space / support to do a bunch of Trail research.
What role did the game play for you and/or what does it mean for you now?
To me, the game is middle school. And for me, and perhaps also everyone, middle school was a terrible time. When we’re that age, when we’re so vulnerable and forming, so the tiniest of things that happen to us can be traumatizing. I think that we spend a lot of our adult lives overcoming and making up for things we didn’t get then. The things we felt we deserved, the things we longed for, but did not get.
The game also stands for this sort of disconnect between a lot of Americans and history. We played this game for hours, but had little to no sense of its actual stakes: actual people traveling the trail for days upon days, some losing their lives horrifically. I think there trauma that our ancestors underwent is imprinted in our DNA, and has something to do the inexplicable sadness that we feel now.
What have you learned and how has the play changed through all of the development you’ve gone through?
Oh man, it has changed a whole lot. It’s lost a character, gained focus. For me, the biggest thing is tone. The tone is kind of, well, insane. I’m employing a game but definitely asking an audience to take its players seriously, to feel for them and go on a journey with them. It’s delicate, for both of the Janes. I want them both to be taken seriously, to be sympathetic. I first wrote Now Jane’s contemporary ennui pre-HBO’s Girls… and now Hannah’s character is kind of a trope. Since it’s been about continuing to hone in on what question I’m asking, which has become more and more about the hereditary nature of sadness.
What are you most looking forward to in the premiere of OT at Flying V?
Just seeing how it all gets realized! Wagons and Oxen and hailstorms and all of it. I just cannot wait. And also just dragging its audience through happy nostalgia, that’ll be nice too, and making us all feel like we’re in middle school again.
How is OT representative of and/or different from your other work?
My absolute favorite theatrical device is juxtaposition. To put two seemingly different worlds on top of each other, see where the similarities lie. Definitely employed this with the worlds of the two Janes.
It’s one of the larger ‘concept’ plays I’ve written, I think. 90% of the time in my plays there is a magical element, a ghost, someone who is there or not, an elephant character, a gun that talks, but this play has a bunch of different elements that are big, bouncing back and forth between the 19th century and now, duets between people who don’t exist in the same time, a game narrator / God type character. We’re on a futon one minute and fording a river the next. GO BIG ‘ER GO HOME!
I’ve been writing for TV for the past three years, and one of the things I love about it is how it has made the plays I love to see and write just EXPLODE.
One of my favorite parts of OT is how the Game offers choices and then restricts Jane’s options when she tries to choose. Did that develop initially from the structure of the game, or from the thematic content?
As soon as I decided to bring the structure of the game into the play, which was when I started writing in in the Lark group, I believe – that was the very first scene I wrote. I wanted the rules of the game to escalate, like it might in a sketch. I wanted the play to go through a huge change a number of times. We start the play feeling like we’re hanging with a middle schooler, watching the game we’re playing – then we get RIPPED through time, and everything changes, like might happen when we enter a new phase of a game.
Do you see this aspect as more about depression or about the social structures that empower some people and limit others? How did you approach the theme of agency and powerlessness in writing the play?
At some point during one of the plays development processes, I realized that I was not writing about clinical depression. I’m writing about a sadness, a listlessness, a sense of worthlessness that so many of us oftentimes feel, that is crippling.
I acknowledge that this is kind of a naive and unrealistic perspective, but I just can’t help it: I’m an inherently optimistic person, and I really want to believe that everyone is inherently happy, inherently good, and HAS the strength to persevere. I think we get that strength from our ancestors. BUT. Two things get in the way – one: factors we cannot control. Everything from random tragedy’s to our parents’ financial situations to weather to politics. And two: the world now, and how from many of us, it is EASY – we do not endure much, we are not tested often, we are often coddled by our parents – which makes us rest back on our heels, watch Netflix, take naps, place blame.
The Oregon Trail experience is one that is particularly evocative and familiar to Millennials. Do you think other aspects of the play are particularly relevant or common for that generation?
I sure hope so. I hope that parents identify – I think the play is also how about hard it is to raise kids. You want things to be easy for them, but you don’t want to make it too easy for them, because you want them to develop character, strength. I also hope just hanging out on the Oregon Trail itself is universally fun.
How did the true history of the Oregon Trail influence your writing, as opposed to the version of that journey that is in the game?
I read a bunch of diaries and journals from people who traveled the trail, especially women. It really grounded me in the hardships of the journey, the tooth and nail FIGHT just to make it each day, the exhausting and endless feeling of it all. It was also devastating to read about the displacement of the Native Americans, and to get better sense of their role during that time. I used to have a Cherokee girl that both Janes interact with – that I have since removed from the play, as she felt tacked on, like she deserved her own play, which hopefully soon I will give her.
I also spent some time learning trail talk, and weaving some delightful words and phrases that I’d found into the script, which was the most fun.
What has your experience been with the Kilroys?
Great! Playwriting can be so narcissistic, you’re constantly in your own head, thinking about your own plays, and I have very much loved being a part of something that’s so much larger than myself, getting the chance to advocate on behalf of hundreds (thousands?) of lady and trans* playwrights.
The Oregon Trail
September 4-20
The Writer’s Center, Bethesda
