Dialogue, identity, and DIY theatre: A conversation with playwright Stephen Gracia

Stephen Gracia, Sunset Park-area local, playwright and co-founder of Dialogue with Three Chords (D3C), is launching his 15th season, entitled “The Funeral Rites of Country Western Superstars,” this September at the Tom Kane Theatre in Industry City. D3C will also hit its 200th play mark this season. Gracia sat down with The Sunset Post at the Tom Kane to talk about identity, punk aesthetics, and the urgency of DIY performance.

Sunset Post: You’ve written nearly 200 plays. Is there a thread that connects them all?

Stephen Gracia: One of the unifying factors of the work I do here and the writing that I do in general is about people finding out who they are and how they're going to move through the world asserting that identity. And that's either triumphant or it’s tragic in whatever the response is. The work I do isn't a polemic, isn't a screed or a one-sided thing. There's a conversation that happens with different points of view, but it always ends with it being on the side of the marginalized, the unseen.

SP: How does that take shape in Dialogue with Three Chords?

SG: Before we were here we were doing it in the basement of bars. And so the aesthetic and the structure of that became, "What is going to capture your attention in a non-traditional space, that you’re not bored or distracted by the sounds behind you in the bar and the ice machine?" So it became very short, 10–15 minute plays, three a night, that are super conversational and dramatic in that way so that you feel like you're at a bar where someone's telling you a story or you're eavesdropping on a conversation, so that it holds people's attention. It's not esoteric, it's not experimental. It's getting you involved in a conversation and our co-founder and director, Michael LoPorto, really has developed the aesthetic of making sure that the audience is on top of the performers.

SP: Now you're at Industry City. How has that changed things?

SG: We’ve been here the last few years, thanks to Anthony [Anthony Marino, who oversees the Tom Kane Theatre] inviting us in. It’s still intimate. You could be acting here in this chair and somebody's right there watching it, and so it brings everybody in. But part of what brings people into scripts is that common theme of talking about who we are, how we got here, and those that are in opposition to that. It resonates with everyone.

SP: What’s coming up this season?

SG: For this coming 15th season, I'm going to concentrate on Southern Gothic stories and every night is going to be influenced by a different Southern Gothic writer—Flannery O'Connor, Harry Crews. Their style, their aesthetic is going to influence what I'm going to write.

SP: You've done horror, pulp, crime... even a Conan the Barbarian play?

SG: Yeah, it’s based loosely on Sam Shepard’s “True West.” It’s two brothers in a kitchen and they’re arguing. And so I took that, where there's two brothers in a kitchen, and the brothers are Conan the Barbarian and Robert E. Howard, who created Conan the Barbarian. Robert is sitting there at a table with a shotgun and Conan comes in and asks if there's coffee. And now they’re having this argument because at that moment his mom is upstairs dying. And when his mother dies in real life he goes out and kills himself. So he’s having this sort of imaginary conversation with Conan and his mother comes down and joins him and these two characters can’t stop the inevitable end of his life.

SP: Do your characters reflect your own experiences?

SG: There are moments of truth—my own personal truth—in every character or in every situation. But it’s not strictly autobiographical. I will only really think about that when I'm watching an actual performance. I'll think, oh, that thing right there that that person is saying, even though it's Conan the Barbarian and it has nothing to do with who I am as a person—but that one thing he's saying there, yeah, that's me. I thought that specific thing or I've said that specific thing or someone will tell a story in a play that is straight out of my own life.

SP: You’ve described your work as having a spiritual thread.

SG: There's a weird hodgepodge of my own Catholic upbringing. Those stories are still in my head and form sort of a foundational mythos within me. And then there are other elements from reading other religious texts, other mythologies. In addition to finding the courage to be who you are, to state your identity, there's also this quest for something beyond that as well. Somebody early on described my writing as "dirty mysticism." And I like that because it's profane and it's rough, but it's also searching for this thing that's beyond our experience.

SP: Your productions have been described as punk.

SG: We took that aesthetic of the early punk scene—of just getting together, doing it rough. Learning, writing a song, and then performing it the next day. It's really about the urgency, the immediacy of it, and the lack of artifice.

SP: What’s the community around D3C like?

SG: We’re lucky to have a deep bench of amazing actors. We have a core group of people that we’ve been working with for years. I would always end the night by saying, if you are interested in being a part of what we do, come up and talk to us. It becomes a place where real seasoned actors can do stuff. And also people who are just trying it and want to do something creative can also do stuff. But the most important thing—the reason this group of actors is so amazing to me—is they’re all super supportive.

SP: What would you say to someone who thinks they don’t have time to be creative?

SG: It's about finding the small moments in your life outside of working 40 or more hours a week to do something creative—something small. Almost all of our actors have other jobs and come here after work and do this. But our ask is very small. It's a two-hour rehearsal on Zoom and then it's night of and then that's it. So doing these things in these bite-sized chunks, in these small moments, it's just as valid as having been lucky enough to dedicate all the hours of the day to it. I think it makes it even more precious. And what you can accomplish in those moments that you have free time outside of your job and outside of other responsibilities—it’s even more of a wonderful thing.

The 15th season of D3C, “The Funeral Rites of Country Western Superstars,” opens 8 PM Sept. 25 at the Tom Kane Theatre with a show called “Survival is Triumph Enough,” featuring the plays “The Assassination of Christopher Marlowe by the Coward Ingram Frizer,” “No One Leaves Unscarred,” and “You Can’t Kill God by Rippin’ Out His Heart.” There is a $5 suggested donation, but D3C has a strict policy of not turning anyone away unable to pay.