Interview: Playright Garret Jon Groenveld and THE HUMMINGBIRDS at NJ Rep

New Jersey Repertory Company (NJ Rep) will present the US Premiere of The Hummingbirds written by Garret Jon Groenveld and directed by the Company's Artistic Director, Suzanne Barabas. The show, that stars Michael Irvin Pollard and Sophia Lucia Parola, will be on the Long Branch Stage from August 4 to August 28.

The Hummingbirds is about two unemployment counselors in a very special office of the Unemployment Bureau. For people who have been unemployed too long, they come to this office to be assigned a job. It may not be a job that they're qualified to do, or a job that's safe for anyone to do, but they have to do it. It concerns what meaningful work is, strippers, domestic terrorism and weaponized hummingbirds.

Broadwayworld had the pleasure of interviewing Garret Jon Groenveld about his fascinating career and the upcoming show at NJ Rep.

Groenveld is a poet and playwright living in San Francisco, CA with an MFA in Poetry and an MA in Playwriting from San Francisco State University. He also studied with Edward Albee at the University of Houston. He's a founding writer of PlayGround and an inaugural member of the Writers in Residence program at the Playwrights Foundation. His play Missives had well received productions in San Francisco and New York. His play, The Hummingbirds is a winner of the 2012 GAP Festival from the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley and the winner of the Internationalists Global Playwriting Prize. This prize included six presentations in six countries (including New York, Berlin and the Netherlands) and has led to productions worldwide, including an ongoing tour of Romania and an extended run in Mexico City, Mexico. The Hummingbirds had a workshop with Olympia Dukakis at the Lark and was in the Theatre Resources Unlimited (TRU) Reading Series in 2015 (with Ellen McLaughlin). His play, The Empty Nesters was in 2014's Theatre Resources Unlimited Reading series and had a production workshop in San Francisco in 2015. An open ended tour of the show premiered in San Francisco in 2016 and a tour is planned for 2019 with stops in LA, Chicago and New York.

We'd love to know when you first developed your penchant for writing.

I came into playwrighting out of poetry, I have my first masters in Poetry and so the sound of things is always really important to me. And then, about when I was almost done with the MFA in Poetry, I took a playwrighting class on the suggestion of my mentor, Frances Mayes ("Under the Tuscan Sun") - and I kind of realized I had gotten really deep into the wrong genre. So I stayed on and got a second masters degree in Playwrighting. And I don't know if writing is a penchant or a compulsion - sometimes I just have to write things. It can be something I've heard or an image I can't get out of my head, and then I have to write it out, and then I have to write what comes next, and then I have to shape it into something that we call a play.

Tell us a little about your education at San Francisco State University and how it prepared you for your writing career?

San Francisco State University in the poetry world of the 90's, was in the middle of a battle between Language Poetry and Lyrical Poetry and I really didn't want to pick a side. I just wanted to write my funky little poems that said things in a complicated way. I am more lyrically inclined, but I learned a lot from the sparseness and angularity of Language Poetry. After I moved into playwrighting, my cohorts were much more supportive and encouraging and trying to figure it out together. It was also an exciting time, as we started a theatre company together called PlayGround - which grew out of San Francisco State and is still going strong today. It was a great experience of writing quickly - get a topic on a Thursday, turn in a short play on Tuesday, and it might get picked to go up the following Monday. That quick process really helped me train my ear and figure out what worked for me.

However, San Francisco State was not very good at career preparation, just really good at the writing part. I'd still much rather write than network or submit a play. I'm working on it.

Do you have any particular advice for aspiring writers?

I used to hate the old saw, "write what you know!" But I write what I know. But not only in the "trauma that happened to me" kind of way - but in the "I see this or that in the world" kind of way. In The Hummingbirds you will see a line about one of the character's shoes; that happened to me that morning that I was writing, so I put it in the play.

I also recommend going to see plays, so you know what's happening now and how people are approaching older material. I love discovering capable and creative actors so I can write for them. I think it's important for playwrights to love actors.

When you get stuck, trick yourself. Top Four ways I trick myself: 1. Get an egg timer (mine is in the shape of a hootie owl) and don't let yourself get up until the 30 minutes have gone by. 2. Go back five pages and read what you have - this often helps you gain context to where you need to go. 3. Skip to the next spot you are clear on, often, you won't need the weird thing that isn't working. 4. Read it aloud. If possible, read it aloud while you're walking around your neighborhood. You look weird, but who cares. Just look out for cars.

Also, I still write by hand, and I never cross out anything, I just draw a box around what isn't working. Because that weird tangent is often something that should happen somewhere else in the piece. If you only write by typing, you can also do this by having a drop file open for those fragments that aren't fitting. Just remember to go back.

Lastly, the world doesn't need another Mamet or Albee or Shakespeare. We have those guys. We need a you! What can you bring to the table? What do you have to say? I can't wait to hear it.

What was your inspiration for writing "The Hummingbirds?"

I had the idea for a play about career counselors for a long time. As I was raised a protestant, immigrant kid but wanted to go into the arts, so I've always struggled balancing the work of art with a day job. In 2010, I was in Florida for the holidays with my parents and brothers and their families, and we had just visited a dolphin sanctuary that my cousin's daughter worked at, and my nephew was despairing about the environment. As we talked, we could not come up with an answer for all the problems we are facing. And I said to him, "It's good that we keep thinking about it - because this stuff is hard. And if there was an easy answer, we would have thought of it already." And that line sparked the play, and that afternoonI wrote what became most of the first scene of the play. A version of that line is in the play. The inspiration for the form is a different story, shortly before this, I had an artistic director who asked me why I had written a play about a straight married couple (my play The Empty Nesters). She thought that I should just admit that I'm a genre writer and write funny gay comedies. That enraged me, that she, as a gay woman, wanted to box me in! So I also set myself the structural challenge of writing a play that erased boundaries, and that's why the play can be performed by any two actors of any age, race or gender.

We know that "The Hummingbirds" has already been performed internationally. How was the audience reception?

The audience perception has really taken on a context of where it has been performed. And when you combine that with the casting opportunities of open age, race or gender, it has made it quite interesting. In Spain and Mexico City, the theme of meaningful work was really prominent, particularly in Spain, where at the time of the production, unemployment of the youth was over 30%. In Mexico City, it was the only cast so far that was two women, and it was not surprising that the dynamic between the two were so different and more supportive than all male casts. In Singapore - they had just had the first race riot in the country's history, between the Chinese bosses and the South Asian day laborers, so that casting was particularly rich to explore. In Romania - a country out of its communist past, but still deep in government corruption - the theme of government control was very deep. The first presentation was actually in protest of the government on the streets of Bucharest. As that production has moved on - one of the characters moved to be played by a recording - the voice of Romanian Communist Television, so it had a particularly resonant meaning for the audience.

How do you like working with New Jersey Repertory Company?

We have been circling each other for a while now. They had wanted to do the play while it was under option by some other folks for something that did not materialize. And I had many friends who had worked here, like playwright Marisella Orta Trevino (Wolf at the Door at NJRep) and director M. Graham Smith who directed Bone on Bone at NJRep. We finally had put together a reading to happen in March of 2020, and then the world shut down. I've worked with a lot of theatres, New Jersey Reps' people are very professional and all moving in the same direction. The cast is doing such brave work, the tech teams are really bringing their creativity to the project. In particular, I'm really inspired by SuzAnne's leadership and direction, she's really letting everyone bring their best stuff. I'm honored to have such a dedicated team on the US Premiere.

What would you like Long Branch audiences to know about the show?

I think Long Branch audiences should know that this show is shockingly funny - it's subtitled a Comedy of Menace for a reason. It's set in a slightly future world where you get assigned a job if you've been out of work for too long. It concerns domestic terrorism, strippers and weaponized hummingbirds. In the 12 years since I wrote it - it's only become more relevant and predictive to where our culture seems to be heading. Boy, do I wish I was wrong. Also, they should check out the production for its unique design, from set, to sound, to lighting - the team are all enjoying the creative challenges this play brings. Lastly, I'm in love with the cast and director. They're giving their hearts to the piece and I couldn't be prouder of them. I also think audience members who love actual hummingbirds will hate me for writing the play. I'm okay with that.

Can you share with us any of your future plans?

I have several other scripts I'm working on, several productions I cannot announce yet and several plays that are under option for TV and Film that I can't talk about either.

Anything else, absolutely anything you want Broadwayworld NJ readers to know.

Other than flying in and out of Newark - I've never spent any time in New Jersey. I'm really looking forward to exploring somewhere I've never been. I hear it's warm, and I live in very cold San Francisco, so I'm bringing the two pairs of shorts I own!

To learn more about Garret Jon Groenveld, visit his page on the New Play Exchange at https://newplayexchange.org/users/149/garret-jon-groenveld.

New Jersey Repertory Company is located at 179 Broadway, Long Branch, NJ 07740. The theatre entrence is in the rear of the building with plenty of free parking. To purchase tickets for The Hummingbirds and the Company's upcoming shows, please visit http://www.njrep.org/.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Garret Jon Groenveld

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