Interview: Chatting With Germaine Shames, Dramatists Guild Foundation National Fellow

"Creates the intense atmosphere of an unstable world with grace and a sort of lyric power.”  - National Public Radio

Germaine Shames (she/her), a Dramatists Guild Foundation National Fellow, Kilroys List playwright, and recipient of her state’s Literary Fellowship in Fiction, is author of the award-winning novels, Between Two Deserts and You, Fascinating You. Writing under the pen name Casper Silk (Hotel Noir, Echo Year), she has been compared to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Graham Greene and P.D. James “on steroids”. 

A former Theatre major, Shames began writing for the stage in 2014 and was instantly smitten. In 2017, the playwright celebrated the New York City premiere of her musical comedy, Anna Karenina Lives!, and the selection of her drama-thriller, The Degenerates, for Williams Street Rep’s LAB New Play Series, and in 2018, the premiere of her protest play, Nasty. Shames' bio-drama, The Higher Love, winner of four national workshop competitions and a finalist for the Trustus Award, was revived in 2022 by Transformation Theatre. Her musicals, If the Spirit Moves (with composer Erin Murray Quinlan) and The Manifesto (with Nadav Amir-Himmel), premiered at Theatre Elision in 2019 and 2020 respectively. Her TYA play, Year of Thirteen Moons, had a digital production at the New Works Playhouse, was one of two winners of ThinkTank's 2021 TYA Playwrights Festival. The Robotics of Love and Longing, a dramedy that brings AI into the bedroom, won First Place at 2023 Fresh Reads. Sweet Spot, an interracial bio-drama set in the sports world, is a 2023 Fulton New Works winner. 

As a librettist and lyricist, Shames collaborates with award-winning composers in musical theatre, opera, choral and popular music. Her songs have been performed across a spectrum of venues and events in such cities as New York, Paris and Washington, DC. Her eco opera, The Bird Lady (with Timothy Miller), previewed at the National Opera Center. "Bomb Squad Rhapsody" and "An Open Letter to Samuel Alito", one-act operas, have premieres in 2022-23. Her immigration-themed musical, Capri (with composer Paul Scherer), won Skyline Theatre Company’s new musical search and was their singular offering at the 2022 NJ Theatre Alliance Stages Festival. Naked (with Tareq Abuissa) has won three competitions: Musicals NOW and the Colorado and Florida Festivals of New Musicals.

In addition to her original works, Shames has made a mission of adapting and re-imagining classic 19th and early 20th-century novels for the stage with an emphasis on those either by women or with strong women’s roles and relationships. Her D.H. Lawrence adaptation, The Virgin and the Traveler, formed part of the 2018 Festival of New American Theatre at Phoenix Theatre. A second Lawrence adaptation. The Lost Girl, won Starlight Theater’s 2019 Playwriting Contest and was subsequently produced by the S. Devon Players. Her Emile Zola re-imagining of The Masterpiece was a finalist for the Trustus Playwright Award, and her radical Nathaniel Hawthorne adaptation, The Scarlet Letter (Bible Belt, 1965), for LOCAL Lab. To date, the playwright has also adapted multiple works by Edith Wharton, Aldous Huxley, and William Faulkner.

Claire Beckman, Artistic Director of Brave New World Rep, has written of Shames, "Germaine advocates for social justice with refreshing maturity, structural elegance, and gut punching dichotomies."
 
Shames holds a Master’s degree in Intercultural Studies. Her writing reflects the breadth of her worldview and fascination with the interplay of cultures, often drawing on events and settings from her sojourns abroad. 

Her work has earned her residencies at the Fundacion Valparaiso, Wildacres Retreat, New York Mills and Yellow Bird Artscape, three professional development grants from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, an Editor's Choice Award from the Historical Novel Society, and a scholarship to the Writers Center at the University of Arizona. 

Whew!

Germaine took time out of her extremely busy schedule to answer a few questions.

Your work has garnered numerous awards and critical acclaim. How have these accolades influenced your career and artistic journey? Has the recognition changed your approach to writing or the types of stories you choose to tell?

I am encouraged by public recognition and grateful to the many collaborators who buoy me up and enable me to give my best. I am particularly grateful for the honor of being a Dramatists Guild Foundation National Fellow. In no way, however, does this recognition affect the stories that I choose to tell or how I go about telling them. My values, aspirations and overarching mission crystallized long before I earned  this honorific.

As a multi-award-winning playwright, your creative process is undoubtedly unique. Could you share insights into your sources of inspiration and how you transform those initial sparks into award-winning plays?

My writing process remains something of a mystery even to me. I write in a light trance state, most often about topics or events that spark passion and impel me to action. The process entails letting go, relinquishing control to something larger than myself. The result is often humbling.

Your characters are celebrated for their complexity and depth. How do you approach character development, and what techniques have contributed to your success in creating such compelling figures?

Character development is another mysterious process that I do not claim to fully understand. For me, it entails inviting my characters to speak and then listening deeply.  My strongest characters surprise me again and again.

Your plays often explore universal themes with a fresh perspective. What are the core themes that resonate most deeply with you, and how has the recognition of your work amplified their impact?

Having worked on six continents and earned a Masters degree in Intercultural Studies, I write from a global perspective with the conscious aim of fostering intercultural, interracial, and cross-gender understanding and healing.

Given your success, you likely have your choice of collaborators. How do you select directors, actors, and designers to bring your award-winning visions to life on stage? What qualities do you look for in your creative partners?

Synergistic collaborations based on mutual respect are one of the greatest joys of my creative life. I seek out collaborators who love the work as much as I do and who hold themselves (and me) to the highest standards.

Even with your remarkable achievements, you must have faced challenges throughout your career. Can you share some of those challenges and the pivotal breakthroughs that propelled you to such heights in the theater world?

My career has been one endless challenge and remains so. These are hard times for theatre makers. Post-Covid, opportunity has contracted. I seem to fare best when I trust my inner voice.

As a celebrated playwright, your work undoubtedly inspires others. Which playwrights or artists have influenced your artistic development, and how do you envision your legacy in the theater landscape?

I grew up a voracious reader of  classic literature and was also fortunate to live in the shadow of Broadway. On any given day, I might read 100 pages of Dostoevsky and then accompany my mother to a matinee of the King and I. My Italian stepfather brought opera into my life, and a great aunt ballet. This rich mélange supercharged my imagination from a young age.

What advice would you give to aspiring playwrights who dream of achieving the same level of recognition and success that you have attained? Are there any specific lessons or insights you've gained on your path to becoming a celebrated playwright?

At the risk of sounding harsh, I would advise anyone considering the writing life not to take the plunge unless they love the process too much not to. Writing as a profession can be brutal, with rejection a daily reality, and recognition sparing and quick to fade. Savor the moments of pure creation. Write from your highest self. Share stories that leave audiences with hope. It’s all about love.

To learn more about Germaine Shames and her extraordinary work and life, visit her website.

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