An Interview With Playwright Mêlisa Annis On Her New Play Charlie's Waiting

Jody Christopherson

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Playwright Mêlisa Annis. Photo by Rubin Ben

Charlie’s Waiting, a world premiere
by 2017 Parity Commission winner Mêlisa Annis, follows
two women the night before their wedding. A pregnant Louise is busy with all
the planning while her fiancée Kelly busies
herself feeding the goats. Everything is going to plan, that is until Louise is
forced to confront questions of trust and intimacy, and she discovers how
quickly plans can get derailed.

The cast is led by Tony nominee Xanthe Elbrick (Broadway: Coram Boy, Candida), and features Stephanie Heitman (A Snowfall in Berlin), and Amy Scanlon (Balladeers Play to the Moon) and is directed by Parity Productions Artistic Director, Ludovica Villar Hauser.

“We often use the phrase ‘a singular talent for
storytelling’ to describe part of our selection criteria for playwrights. Mêlisa
Annis has that very singular talent,” says Parity’s Found and Artistic
Director, Ludovica Villar-Hauser. “Mêlisa explores intimacy, trust,
abandonment, abuse of power, and relationship dynamics — all told with her
characteristic dark wit and deep wisdom. Mêlisa can make us laugh and make us
uncomfortable, all while keeping us on the edge of our seats.”

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Parity Productions, is dedicated to producing new work and filling at least 50% of the
creative positions (playwrights, directors, and designers) with women and/or
trans and gender nonconforming (TCNG) artists. Charlie’s
Waiting plays March 28 through April 20 at Theaterlab (357 W 36th St, New
York, NY 10018) hosted by TLab Shares. Visit this link to purchase tickets.

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Tell me about “Charlie’s Waiting”, who is Charlie and where did the inspiration come from to write this play?

Mêlisa Annis: Well, I don’t want to tell you too much as I don’t want to spoil the play, you’ll have to come and see it to find out who Charlie is… I’m always interested in the unspoken rules of relationships. When we decide to partner with someone, we also decide how much of ourselves we want to share, and for some it’s easier than others. Sometimes we don’t want our pasts to color who we are today, and that is a choice one can make when they enter a new relationship. I think it’s interesting that we put so much stock in history, I’m a history buff and love context, but what happens when that context is painful and too hard to face? Can we just put our heads in the sand? And what happens when we do? I suppose the inspiration came from my personal life, I like to run away, I’m an immigrant who had a new beginning in America, and perhaps this was me facing those facts and exploring whether we can ever actually start again with a clean slate.

The most exciting and most challenging things you have discovered in this process?

Mêlisa Annis: Every play has its own set of challenges, finishing it is always number one, but with this one, it’s a challenge to see how much (or little) I can get away with in terms of information. Charlie’s Waiting is all about the unsaid, and so how do you write a play about something that’s never really discussed? I’m excited to see how the audience responds to this, it will be its first production, and so that in itself is scary and exciting.

What are your hopes for the American Theater?

Mêlisa Annis: I think American Theater is in a very exciting place in terms of content, has been for years. I hope that we can take new plays out to the people of America more. Not just presenting in big regional houses, but to smaller communities, community centers, schools – this will help grow our future audiences, and hopefully inspire new voices to write for the theater. It’s not easy being a playwright – there are no big bucks in it let me tell you – and so we need to find a way to foster and inspire those who may not have the financial ability to come to New York and inspire them in their own communities to write, and show that work across the country. The theatrical landscape will be richer for it.

What’s the impossible thing you would make if there were no limitations?

Mêlisa Annis: I’m currently working on an adaptation of A Dream Play by August Strindberg. It’s a sprawling mess of aerial work, magic on stage, passion, puppets, songs, dances, kinks, whips and desire – a cast of 20! I know that this is a near impossible dream to see produced on stage (without that lovely Broadway budget we all dream of), but if you dream it, you must write it, and so that’s what I’m doing at the moment.

What the thing you would give your younger self, a theatermaker just starting out?

Mêlisa Annis: Confidence. It’s as simple as that. It takes me two weeks to a draft of a play from beginning to end, but it still takes me years sometimes to take it out of the drawer and share it with someone. I wish that I had the confidence, in the beginning, to share share share and ask for what I wanted – it would be so much easier now if I’d had that practice then.

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Mêlisa Annis’s work has been seen at or
developed by Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, The Lark, and with Dorset Theater Festival at the Theresa
Rebeck Writers Colony, The New School, Primary Stages, ESPA*Drills, Tangent
Theater, AboutFace Theater (Ireland), and her play United Front was a finalist for
the Lark’s Playwrights Week. She won the Margaret Lamb Creative Writing Prize,
and was the recipient of the Fordham Summer Fellowship while studying for her
MFA in playwriting at Fordham/Primary Stages. Mêlisa
has written for new children’s show Jessy and Nessy for Amazon Studios/JAM Media. Mêlisa’s play Aberfan
was published in Clockhouse
Literary Magazine
(Goddard University) and her play Fit for a King was illustrated and published in Fourth Wall Magazine. Mêlisa
is a frequent contributor to BBC Wales factual programming, and has written
personal essays for The Western Mail (UK) and BBC Online.
She is the recipient of the Parity Productions Inaugural Annual Commission for
her play Charlie’s Waiting.

Jody Christopherson is a New York based Performer, Writer, Photographer, Artistic Director of the So-fi Festival and the Creator/ Editor in Cheif of The New York Theatre Review, for which she has the pleasure of interviewing all kinds of incredible theater artists.

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An Interview With Playwright Mêlisa Annis On Her New Play Charlie’s Waiting