Interview: Lisa D'Amour of THE FROZEN SECTION at Catastrophic Theatre

Lisa D’Amour is a playwright and a performer, and she is also a former carnival queen from New Orleans. D’Amour is an alumna of New Dramatists, and her play, Detroit, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for drama. She is a University of Texas graduate who was awarded a Master's in playwriting. She is in town to do a world premiere of The Frozen Section with Catastrophic Theatre. It will be running at the Match from April 4th until April 19th. Broadway World writer Brett Cullum talked with Lisa about this work and her career over the years. 

Brett Cullum: The Frozen Section is one of the shows that I've been looking forward to all year. I researched you, and some places describe you as an interdisciplinary artist, meaning you collage many things and mediums. You mix visual art with acting. Tell me a little bit about your approach to that first.

Lisa D'Amour: I often say I have two career branches. One is as a playwright who sits at my desk and writes a play that I then try to get a theater to produce, and the other branch is this more collaborative work that I usually do with my company, PearlDamour. My collaborator, director, Katie Pearl and I have a company together for the last 25 years, and we really like to shake up the theatrical form. We often start with either a topic or a place, and we make the show for the place. Almost every time we make a new piece, we begin the process by working closely with either a dancer, a composer, or a visual artist to create something hybrid that is more than theater.

A good example of the kind of work we do is a piece called How to Build a Forest, which toured from 2011 till around 2017; it was a piece of art that we created with visual artist Sean Hall, in which we designed a fabric forest that we could assemble in front of an audience's eyes over the course of about six and a half hours. While we were creating this lush yet entirely fake forest, as an audience member, you could come into the forest and watch what we were doing, look at us close-up, and maybe take away little pieces of the forest. And then the forest lived for about half an hour, and then we took the whole thing down in 45 minutes back to a bare stage. So this ecosystem appeared and rapidly disappeared before your eyes, and people could come for twenty minutes, for two hours, or the whole eight hours if they wanted to. But it was a meditation on how long certain natural forms take to be built up and how quickly humans can cut them down. And also how we, as humans, are intimately connected to these ecosystems. So, it is not quite theater, but it is not quite visual art. It was an immersive process that came out of this deep collaboration with a visual artist.

What's wild is that many of these interdisciplinary artists come through with Catastrophic Theatre. So when I read about your company, I thought, “Oh, this sounds amazing. Kind of like an art installation and a theater piece together,” because it does feel like you just hit all of it. From what I can suss out online, it looks like Infernal Bridegroom Productions here in Houston, which included most of the artists we now call Catastrophic Theatre because they've evolved beyond a hellish wedding party to full-blown chaos. They produced one of your early works called Hidetown in 2006. How did you first hook up with this group of notorious Houston artists?

We were introduced by a mutual friend named Shilah Dewan, who was on the Infernal Bridegroom's board at the time, and I sent them some plays. It was a long time ago, so I remember putting them in the envelope and snail mailing them to Jason Nodler [past and current artistic director as well as the director of The Frozen Section], and then we applied for an NEA grant together, which was a commissioning grant that would allow me to write something new for them. We decided that we wanted to write a show that was going to be inspired by our visits to Texas ghost towns. So some of the actors and Tamarie Cooper [artistic director/actress/chanteuse/egg roll spokesperson] and I took these trips out into the middle of nowhere. Sometimes, we'd get there, and there'd be nothing there. But we researched some of these towns. We hung out in all of these ruins. Then, I imagined this kind of new world called Hidetown, which became a completely new play. And it's interesting. It feels like a distant cousin of Frozen Section because it's set in future Texas, in the middle of another ice age. It's set in this bar in the middle of this town and about the people trying to survive there. It was about community and apocalypse, with a little mix of reality TV shows. It was a wild and wonderful piece. I really loved their production of it, and that was my first time writing something for the ensemble. So, since then, the other two plays of mine that Catastrophic produced have pre-existed. So this is a real return because I've now written this new play very much for their ensemble.

Yeah, tell me about The Frozen Section. What is it about?

The Frozen Section is set in a grocery store at the edge of the world. It is about a community of people living in a world with far fewer people and a much harder, harder way of living. They are not exactly living off the grid, but they are in places that are powered by generators. And this particular community of people is this store. They are going to band together, basically by cosplaying “grocery store.” So we meet the people who are the workers and the people who are the shoppers in the early parts of the play. It may seem like this is a normal grocery store, but very quickly, you realize something is off. The play is more of a surreal work of art, perhaps in the tradition of Ionesco and Samuel Beckett. The way to enjoy the play is by getting to know these idiosyncratic characters but also trying to experience what the play is thinking about - the poetics of the play and how you're moving through the poem. Catastrophic is very good at this kind of work. I think they really embrace plays that are strange and filled with metaphor and are reaching into your Psyche, which is what I feel when I come to a Catastrophic play. So I was really trying to deliver that for them! 

Well, they are the company that challenges you beyond just the narrative. But what inspired you to come up with The Frozen Section? I've been thinking about the grocery store and the apocalypse for the last few weeks. But that's just because of what's happening. The price of eggs! The grocery store is this kind of symbol of doom in a weird way. But what inspired you initially? How long have you been developing this?

I started writing this for them early last year, and it was very nonlinear. I had this image of this store. I didn't really know exactly. I rarely know what I'm writing about when I begin. And so I started assembling these different scenes with these different characters. I wrote the play very out of order. But I was thinking about a grocery store. I was thinking about things like how we stock up on supplies before hurricanes. Right? I live in New Orleans. You live in Houston, so there's always this kind of rush on supplies. And is there going to be enough, right? And then, during a crisis. There's also looting of grocery stores. 

In normal times, though in everyday times, the grocery store can be a very calming place. You're often there by yourself. You're in your head. You're following your list. You may be familiar with where things are. I enjoy being in the grocery store by myself. It’s a very public place, with all the different personalities a grocery store can take on. I am in the pocket of Generation. I grew up before the Internet. I grew up, you know, like many “Gen Xers,” having a bunch of part-time jobs and donut shops and grocery stores with somebody's dad's tiny lawyer office where I was filing; I was doing a lot of these jobs. I was thinking about how working in the community when each person has their assigned job, can be a very comforting and secure place, and you know your job. You do your job. Everyone knows what your job is. And so I was thinking about how that kind of structure or ecosystem in a grocery store could lead to a kind of comfort within a community. Those are some things I was thinking about.

It's always interesting to me when we have a world premiere because you're coming in and working with this company. Are they influencing? Are you rewriting bits and pieces as you go through the rehearsal process? Are they helping you develop? Maybe further this whole idea of The Frozen Section?

Oh, goodness! So much, so much at every phase! So even before we cast the play, we did a reading of an early draft and had lots of discussions with the people who did the reading with Tamarie Cooper and Jason Nodler [two folks behind all this madness] to develop the play further. And then, you know, Catastrophic. Such a great company because there was a lot that I didn't understand about the play early on, and they encouraged me to keep going. They were like, “Your instincts are telling you something, Lisa. Just keep going.” There are not many theaters that will tell you that. Theaters like to give you really specific notes. 

So then we cast the play. We've been in rehearsal for almost three weeks. After the 1st week, I had a lot of conversations. I asked all the actors the questions that they had about their characters. I took that into consideration. And then I went through, and I made a bunch of cuts and went through the play to make sure that everything lined up because I was like, “Oh, wait! This doesn't say this in scene one, which doesn't match what's happening at the end of the play. So it's sort of like a cleanup of the draft, and we printed an entirely new draft and kept going. But it's very much been informed by feedback from the cast. 

I've seen many Catastrophic shows over the years, so I know the quality of their wonderful intergenerational, many-gendered, many-races ensemble. I was really leaning into the richness of that particular Catastrophic diversity. It's created a really interesting world for this play.

Well, I think it's wild you touched on that. They have three world premieres this season alone.

It's crazy. It blows my mind. When I saw their season, I was like, “Wow! Oh, right, theater is dying! It's like, “What are you talking about?” Catastrophic is not doing Agatha Christie! God bless the Alley. Catastrophic is doing these rigorous, challenging; I would also argue, very queer world premieres across the board. When I watch rehearsals, I'm like, “This is so queer, and this is so punk rock!” The play also has a bit of a burlesque feeling, as if it moves in a very strange way. It's really funny. There's a spectacle in it. I would say it almost feels like a dream, the play. However, I wouldn't say that the play is about gender identity. Gender identity is mentioned once. Maybe. But you feel it. You feel the fluidity of identity throughout the play. I would say.

Now, let's talk about the elephant in the room. You were up for a Pulitzer for your play, Detroit. It almost made it to Broadway. It ended up being put on by Playwrights Horizons in 2012, which is not too shabby. Oh, and just to name-drop a little further, Steppenwolf in Chicago two years earlier. They did it.

And also the National Theater in London, which was amazing. There's there's a million reasons why a play might not make the leap to Broadway. One of the reasons is that the closing night of Detroit in New York City was hurricane Sandy, which kind of wiped out a lot of people's energy and money. I always think it's so ironic because I come from New Orleans. I lived through Katrina. I'm just like, “Wow! Hurricanes are just gonna come and bite me in my butt for the rest of my life.” Detroit had an amazing life. It's been produced all across the country and the world. And so it was really good for me too. I mean, really and truly, going to Broadway is one thing, but allowing your play to have a life in many other ways.

Okay, what are we in store for The Frozen Section? How long does this one gonna run? 

Yeah, between ninety min and an hour and forty, somewhere in there. It's a one act. We don't really know the running time now because we're in the middle of rehearsals. 

And it's going to be at the MATCH from April 4th until at least April 19th. Lisa, I'm so flattered even to get to talk to you. I've heard so much about you, and especially all the hype around Detroit, and we're so glad to have you back with the CatastrophicTHEATRE for a fourth time. It's gotta be something that you like about them.

Oh, I love them and think they are a Houston treasure. I believe that for so many reasons.

I absolutely agree with you, and I will be there opening night. So break many legs, and we will see you in The Frozen Section. Wandering aimlessly through a queer and punk rock grocery store and looking for the meaning of the poetry.

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