A CONVERSATION BETWEEN
JASON TAMBORINI, PROLOGUE THEATRE’S ARTISTIC DIRECTOR &
Michael mobley, PLAYWRIGHT OF monsters
Jason Tamborini:
Welcome. My name is Jason Tamborini, Artistic Director of Prologue Theatre, and I'm here today with Michael Mobley playwright of Monsters, which will be the third play in our FOREWORD, new works series that we are workshopping. Welcome Michael. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Michael Mobley:
Thank you for having me.
Jason Tamborini:
So we're just going to kind of jump right into these questions and make it a casual chat. So I guess tell us a little bit about yourself, that kind of stuff.
Michael Mobley:
Yeah. I'm an emerging playwright from Prince George's County, Maryland. I'm very excited, yeah. My work mainly centers on the intimate and private lives of Black Americans, and sometimes I tell those stories by using different genre conventions like in Monsters, yeah.
Jason Tamborini:
Awesome. And so what else are you doing? I already know some of the answers to these, but what are some of the other things you're doing, that you've done, I mean, maybe even just today?
Michael Mobley:
Well, went to the gym, did a little workout today, and I read, do my daily reading that I do. And also, I am preparing to close out my semester in grad school.
Jason Tamborini:
Very cool. And where are you a student?
Michael Mobley:
I'm a student at the University of Texas at Austin.
Jason Tamborini:
Cool. In a playwriting program?
Michael Mobley:
Yeah. Well actually I'm a Michener fellow, but my primary focus is playwriting.
Jason Tamborini:
Very cool. Very cool. And so do you have any other projects you're working on at this time, or is it you're focusing right now just mainly on Monsters?
Michael Mobley:
No, I'm also working on, in addition to Monsters, I'm also working on a play about a group of friends who are trying to hold onto their friendship while the world is ending around them. And I'll leave it at that. (laughter)
Jason Tamborini:
Yeah. Was this born during the pandemic, potentially?
Michael Mobley:
Maybe, we'll see. We'll see.
Jason Tamborini:
Yeah. I mean, but I will, and I will say, look, as having read quite a number of the submissions for the series, it is a theme, a recurring theme throughout. And as we know, I mean, playwrights, not to be overly generic and widespread in making a comment about a group people, but they tend to write what they know and what they are experiencing. So it's not all that unheard of. We have obviously been through a lot in the past few years, just as a group of artists. So, awesome. Well, I want to ask about your particular writing style and your writing routine. If you have a particular writing philosophy. You mentioned you do daily readings. Can you maybe tell us about that?
Michael Mobley:
Yeah, I know people would like to say write every day. Well, I kind of do that, but I also am a huge supporter or advocate for reading every day. I think that's really important, especially if you want to be a writer, is that you really, I feel like I need to read it. Also, I feel like I haven't read enough. So every morning I'll read a couple of poems, and I'll read a short story from a short story collection. And at night I'll read an essay or a chapter of a history book, or a non-fiction book. Then I'll try to fit a play or novel during the week. And this is all on top of the readings for class that I have to do. So it's like, it's a lot.
Jason Tamborini:
Well, yeah. I totally understand though on that idea of it's hard to write if you don't read. Do you have a particular writer that you, or a poet that you feel really has made a big impact on your writing, on your work?
Michael Mobley:
Yeah, I think one of DC's most, I feel like he doesn't get enough due, is Edward P. Jones. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist. And all his work, except for his novels, is set in DC. And I just really liked the way that he used a sense of place, because I feel like in my work, well some people in my cohort at grad school say that, in my work, that a sense of place is really present in my work, in the way that I write. And I didn't know that, I didn't know that.
Jason Tamborini:
I would absolutely agree with having read the script a couple times now, I mean, I would absolutely agree with that. And it's kind of interesting that you don't notice that about yourself and about your writing until somebody points it out. That's very interesting. Cool, do you have any other, I mean, the idea of always reading and read every day, write every day, do you have any other particular pieces of a writing routine or a specific writing philosophy?
Michael Mobley:
Yeah, I mean, I would just write every day until the draft or the rewrite is finished. And then also before I even start writing a play, I will have my own research. I'll do my own research of the play, even if it takes place during a pandemic, that I've lived through. But I also do research on it because there's other people who have... Because there's been other pandemics and have been other epidemics and other things like that. And they'll help me because I do believe that art is in conversation with other art. And nothing is really original. Nothing is really original. So I believe that I want, I want my work to be in conversation with other pieces of art.
Jason Tamborini:
Art in conversation with art. That there's your philosophy, single statement, done. Yeah, when I was in grad school, I came across a book and read it cover to cover. I couldn't put it down. It's a book called The Seven Basic Plots. And I love reading, I read every day. Mostly fiction and scripts and plays, every so often something nonfiction. But it kind of ruined reading for me for a bit of just like, oh yeah, this is this, oh well this is this, or this is a combination of this. But you're absolutely right though that idea of art influencing art and art just being there as part of that, in that conversation with other art and itself at the same time. Yeah, it's there. That's great.
So, I'm going to ask, you talked about your inspiration for this other play you're working on right now. What was your inspiration for Monsters?
Michael Mobley:
Well, I was a haunted house performer. I only had got the job because I had got an internship at a, I'm not going to say the place, it's a very large institution in DC. But I had an internship there and then I was working 40 hours for free and so I wanted to get some extra cash, earn some extra cash. And I had applied for a job at Six Flags, during the time it was the fall, so it was that season. And so I was put into this haunted house with these other performers and I realized that they were all Black men, we were majority Black men. And a thought occurred to me that people find us scary even without the mask and the costume on. Because this is also at the height of Black Lives Matter and racial injustice and stuff like that. And so then it led me to think about monsters, and to have almost like this sympathy for people like Freddy Krueger or Leatherface, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and all of that.
And I thought to myself, and I asked myself the question, are monsters created or are monsters born? And that's the really big question that really led me to writing the play. And then also there's horror movies that was going on around this time like Get Out and Midsommar that I really loved. And also growing up, I watched a lot of horror movies. I wouldn't say I'm a horror fan or a horror aficionado or anything like that, but I've definitely watched a lot or a few of them. And then also there's like no horror plays that feature Black people in the starring role.
Jason Tamborini:
Interesting.
Michael Mobley:
So, Wait Until Dark, Deathtrap, Misery, which is based off the novel by Stephen King that was produced on Broadway. I forgot what season, but it was soon, but that didn't have any Black people. Carrie, the musical. So, I wanted to also add into the cannon for any Black people who were like where are the horror plays? I want to play in a horror play, yeah.
Jason Tamborini:
Yeah. I mean there's no real, and I mean, I'm trying to think of any play that I would classify as horror. And most of them I can think of are more like murder mystery. Or almost like a thriller, but it's more psychological in nature. It's not necessarily in the horror genre. That's interesting. And I do like what you said about that idea of the monsters from monster movies and horror films. It's that not so veiled metaphor of just the most misunderstood person or people or anything like that, yeah.
Michael Mobley:
Yeah.
Jason Tamborini:
Yeah that's awesome.
Michael Mobley:
Because I think we all wonder their origin stories about what are these people are hunting these other people for?
Jason Tamborini:
Yeah. You look at, I even the most, I guess, I mean, would the most classic of all classic monsters in a monster movie Dracula. And you end up with how many movies about the origin of, or books and all that, the origin of vampires and what that really is, and all of those. And there's just, I mean, hundreds of books about that.
Michael Mobley:
Yeah.
Jason Tamborini:
And the answer to this might be nothing at this point, what would you say, if anything, has changed in your thinking about this play from when you first conceived it? Or has anything changed?
Michael Mobley:
Yeah, there was a character who had a monologue, well, all three of them have monologues, but one of the characters, the name is Javon. He's the youngest performer and the youngest character in the play. And he had this really long monologue that I kind of realized that it wasn't revealing anything about the character. It was revealing something totally different. And so I rewrote it before I submitted the play to the FOREWORD series. And I really want to hear this new monologue that I feel like reveals something different, and reveals who he is in the play. And so I want to see how to develop and how that monologue, the consequences of that monologue throughout the second half of the play. So that's one of the big things I'm looking forward to. And I'm also looking into the very last scene, the very last moment of the play too.
Jason Tamborini:
Yeah. I mean, for any playwright really, the workshop process can become a huge boost for their work and give them potentially any number of things in that room. Obviously, the idea that you're finally getting a chance to hear it from other people outside of your own head, is always great. And I know a lot of playwrights who say, "Oh, I had some friends come over and they read the script out loud," which your friends might be Broadway actors or Hollywood actors. And that happens and that's cool, but it's very rare. But aside from just getting a chance to hear it out loud, is there anything about this, about any workshop process that you think is really the most valuable?
Michael Mobley:
Yeah, I get to work with actors. I feel like my writing is very character centered. And so it's nice to see when the actors, like really smart and intelligent actors, not just talented actors, but really smart and intelligent actors, really are able to help me deepen and develop the character. And that's amazing. But then also working with the director and the dramaturg because they show me my blind spots, and they also show me new ways of seeing the play with fresh eyes too.
Jason Tamborini:
Very cool. Yeah. No, yeah. And it's always the blind spots that surprise us the most. I know I have many of them and it's so fortunate to be able to work with people that I do where they go, what about this? So yeah. Do you have any plans, specifically this play, for Monsters after the workshop? Do you have any, you're like, oh I'm going to take it and sell it? I don't know, just asking.
Michael Mobley:
I was going to be like, oh getting produced, but that's everyone's thing. No, but I think that I might enter it into different competitions because I've never done that for a play. But I also really want to use this time or the workshop to, or the readings really, the public readings to really be able to almost reintroduce myself to the DMV theater community again, because like I was saying I had internships and I worked in the theater community in DC, on the administrative side. So I never really ever, I guess, promoted myself as a playwright, even though I was writing plays during those jobs, like I was working on plays and stuff like that. But no, but I really do hope that this is, will give me a chance to reintroduce myself as a playwright.
Jason Tamborini:
Awesome. That's great. That's awesome. I look forward to that as well. And so, that's really all the big questions I have for you. I try to end any interview I do with just some random questions to just kind of have a little bit of fun. So I sent you the list.
I just want to know, I'm curious, robots or dinosaurs?
Michael Mobley:
Because of what's going on right now with AI and this ChatGPT or whatever, I'm going to have to say robots because I want them on my side.
Jason Tamborini:
Okay. On your side, yeah. Trains or planes?
Michael Mobley:
I'm gonna go with trains, even though planes are faster. But I like trains. I like trains.
Jason Tamborini:
I take the train anytime I can, especially for long trips. I go visit my brother, he lives in Florida and it's a 16, 18 hour train ride, but it's so much better. I don't love flying, so.
Michael Mobley:
Oh.
Jason Tamborini:
Salsa or guacamole?
Michael Mobley:
I'll have to go guacamole.
Jason Tamborini:
Okay. Yeah. Hey look, I get it. And the last one. Time machine, or magic wand?
Michael Mobley:
Oh my goodness. I'm going to have to with the magic wand.
Jason Tamborini:
Okay.
Michael Mobley:
Yeah I have to go with the magic wand. I can change things, in time. And I don't have to go back in time.
Jason Tamborini:
See, I agree. I thought the same thing. I was like, I mean, yeah, I could travel in time, but I could also just change it with this magic. I agree. I agree.
Michael Mobley:
Right.
Jason Tamborini:
Makes sense. Awesome.
Well Michael, thank you so very, very much for your time today. I'm very much looking forward to getting a chance to do this workshop with you. The workshop performance, or I guess the readings, dates again are May 19th and 20th. The evening of the 19th and the afternoon of the 20th. Thank you again for your time and we'll talk again soon.
Welcome. My name is Jason Tamborini, Artistic Director of Prologue Theatre, and I'm here today with Michael Mobley playwright of Monsters, which will be the third play in our FOREWORD, new works series that we are workshopping. Welcome Michael. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Michael Mobley:
Thank you for having me.
Jason Tamborini:
So we're just going to kind of jump right into these questions and make it a casual chat. So I guess tell us a little bit about yourself, that kind of stuff.
Michael Mobley:
Yeah. I'm an emerging playwright from Prince George's County, Maryland. I'm very excited, yeah. My work mainly centers on the intimate and private lives of Black Americans, and sometimes I tell those stories by using different genre conventions like in Monsters, yeah.
Jason Tamborini:
Awesome. And so what else are you doing? I already know some of the answers to these, but what are some of the other things you're doing, that you've done, I mean, maybe even just today?
Michael Mobley:
Well, went to the gym, did a little workout today, and I read, do my daily reading that I do. And also, I am preparing to close out my semester in grad school.
Jason Tamborini:
Very cool. And where are you a student?
Michael Mobley:
I'm a student at the University of Texas at Austin.
Jason Tamborini:
Cool. In a playwriting program?
Michael Mobley:
Yeah. Well actually I'm a Michener fellow, but my primary focus is playwriting.
Jason Tamborini:
Very cool. Very cool. And so do you have any other projects you're working on at this time, or is it you're focusing right now just mainly on Monsters?
Michael Mobley:
No, I'm also working on, in addition to Monsters, I'm also working on a play about a group of friends who are trying to hold onto their friendship while the world is ending around them. And I'll leave it at that. (laughter)
Jason Tamborini:
Yeah. Was this born during the pandemic, potentially?
Michael Mobley:
Maybe, we'll see. We'll see.
Jason Tamborini:
Yeah. I mean, but I will, and I will say, look, as having read quite a number of the submissions for the series, it is a theme, a recurring theme throughout. And as we know, I mean, playwrights, not to be overly generic and widespread in making a comment about a group people, but they tend to write what they know and what they are experiencing. So it's not all that unheard of. We have obviously been through a lot in the past few years, just as a group of artists. So, awesome. Well, I want to ask about your particular writing style and your writing routine. If you have a particular writing philosophy. You mentioned you do daily readings. Can you maybe tell us about that?
Michael Mobley:
Yeah, I know people would like to say write every day. Well, I kind of do that, but I also am a huge supporter or advocate for reading every day. I think that's really important, especially if you want to be a writer, is that you really, I feel like I need to read it. Also, I feel like I haven't read enough. So every morning I'll read a couple of poems, and I'll read a short story from a short story collection. And at night I'll read an essay or a chapter of a history book, or a non-fiction book. Then I'll try to fit a play or novel during the week. And this is all on top of the readings for class that I have to do. So it's like, it's a lot.
Jason Tamborini:
Well, yeah. I totally understand though on that idea of it's hard to write if you don't read. Do you have a particular writer that you, or a poet that you feel really has made a big impact on your writing, on your work?
Michael Mobley:
Yeah, I think one of DC's most, I feel like he doesn't get enough due, is Edward P. Jones. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist. And all his work, except for his novels, is set in DC. And I just really liked the way that he used a sense of place, because I feel like in my work, well some people in my cohort at grad school say that, in my work, that a sense of place is really present in my work, in the way that I write. And I didn't know that, I didn't know that.
Jason Tamborini:
I would absolutely agree with having read the script a couple times now, I mean, I would absolutely agree with that. And it's kind of interesting that you don't notice that about yourself and about your writing until somebody points it out. That's very interesting. Cool, do you have any other, I mean, the idea of always reading and read every day, write every day, do you have any other particular pieces of a writing routine or a specific writing philosophy?
Michael Mobley:
Yeah, I mean, I would just write every day until the draft or the rewrite is finished. And then also before I even start writing a play, I will have my own research. I'll do my own research of the play, even if it takes place during a pandemic, that I've lived through. But I also do research on it because there's other people who have... Because there's been other pandemics and have been other epidemics and other things like that. And they'll help me because I do believe that art is in conversation with other art. And nothing is really original. Nothing is really original. So I believe that I want, I want my work to be in conversation with other pieces of art.
Jason Tamborini:
Art in conversation with art. That there's your philosophy, single statement, done. Yeah, when I was in grad school, I came across a book and read it cover to cover. I couldn't put it down. It's a book called The Seven Basic Plots. And I love reading, I read every day. Mostly fiction and scripts and plays, every so often something nonfiction. But it kind of ruined reading for me for a bit of just like, oh yeah, this is this, oh well this is this, or this is a combination of this. But you're absolutely right though that idea of art influencing art and art just being there as part of that, in that conversation with other art and itself at the same time. Yeah, it's there. That's great.
So, I'm going to ask, you talked about your inspiration for this other play you're working on right now. What was your inspiration for Monsters?
Michael Mobley:
Well, I was a haunted house performer. I only had got the job because I had got an internship at a, I'm not going to say the place, it's a very large institution in DC. But I had an internship there and then I was working 40 hours for free and so I wanted to get some extra cash, earn some extra cash. And I had applied for a job at Six Flags, during the time it was the fall, so it was that season. And so I was put into this haunted house with these other performers and I realized that they were all Black men, we were majority Black men. And a thought occurred to me that people find us scary even without the mask and the costume on. Because this is also at the height of Black Lives Matter and racial injustice and stuff like that. And so then it led me to think about monsters, and to have almost like this sympathy for people like Freddy Krueger or Leatherface, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and all of that.
And I thought to myself, and I asked myself the question, are monsters created or are monsters born? And that's the really big question that really led me to writing the play. And then also there's horror movies that was going on around this time like Get Out and Midsommar that I really loved. And also growing up, I watched a lot of horror movies. I wouldn't say I'm a horror fan or a horror aficionado or anything like that, but I've definitely watched a lot or a few of them. And then also there's like no horror plays that feature Black people in the starring role.
Jason Tamborini:
Interesting.
Michael Mobley:
So, Wait Until Dark, Deathtrap, Misery, which is based off the novel by Stephen King that was produced on Broadway. I forgot what season, but it was soon, but that didn't have any Black people. Carrie, the musical. So, I wanted to also add into the cannon for any Black people who were like where are the horror plays? I want to play in a horror play, yeah.
Jason Tamborini:
Yeah. I mean there's no real, and I mean, I'm trying to think of any play that I would classify as horror. And most of them I can think of are more like murder mystery. Or almost like a thriller, but it's more psychological in nature. It's not necessarily in the horror genre. That's interesting. And I do like what you said about that idea of the monsters from monster movies and horror films. It's that not so veiled metaphor of just the most misunderstood person or people or anything like that, yeah.
Michael Mobley:
Yeah.
Jason Tamborini:
Yeah that's awesome.
Michael Mobley:
Because I think we all wonder their origin stories about what are these people are hunting these other people for?
Jason Tamborini:
Yeah. You look at, I even the most, I guess, I mean, would the most classic of all classic monsters in a monster movie Dracula. And you end up with how many movies about the origin of, or books and all that, the origin of vampires and what that really is, and all of those. And there's just, I mean, hundreds of books about that.
Michael Mobley:
Yeah.
Jason Tamborini:
And the answer to this might be nothing at this point, what would you say, if anything, has changed in your thinking about this play from when you first conceived it? Or has anything changed?
Michael Mobley:
Yeah, there was a character who had a monologue, well, all three of them have monologues, but one of the characters, the name is Javon. He's the youngest performer and the youngest character in the play. And he had this really long monologue that I kind of realized that it wasn't revealing anything about the character. It was revealing something totally different. And so I rewrote it before I submitted the play to the FOREWORD series. And I really want to hear this new monologue that I feel like reveals something different, and reveals who he is in the play. And so I want to see how to develop and how that monologue, the consequences of that monologue throughout the second half of the play. So that's one of the big things I'm looking forward to. And I'm also looking into the very last scene, the very last moment of the play too.
Jason Tamborini:
Yeah. I mean, for any playwright really, the workshop process can become a huge boost for their work and give them potentially any number of things in that room. Obviously, the idea that you're finally getting a chance to hear it from other people outside of your own head, is always great. And I know a lot of playwrights who say, "Oh, I had some friends come over and they read the script out loud," which your friends might be Broadway actors or Hollywood actors. And that happens and that's cool, but it's very rare. But aside from just getting a chance to hear it out loud, is there anything about this, about any workshop process that you think is really the most valuable?
Michael Mobley:
Yeah, I get to work with actors. I feel like my writing is very character centered. And so it's nice to see when the actors, like really smart and intelligent actors, not just talented actors, but really smart and intelligent actors, really are able to help me deepen and develop the character. And that's amazing. But then also working with the director and the dramaturg because they show me my blind spots, and they also show me new ways of seeing the play with fresh eyes too.
Jason Tamborini:
Very cool. Yeah. No, yeah. And it's always the blind spots that surprise us the most. I know I have many of them and it's so fortunate to be able to work with people that I do where they go, what about this? So yeah. Do you have any plans, specifically this play, for Monsters after the workshop? Do you have any, you're like, oh I'm going to take it and sell it? I don't know, just asking.
Michael Mobley:
I was going to be like, oh getting produced, but that's everyone's thing. No, but I think that I might enter it into different competitions because I've never done that for a play. But I also really want to use this time or the workshop to, or the readings really, the public readings to really be able to almost reintroduce myself to the DMV theater community again, because like I was saying I had internships and I worked in the theater community in DC, on the administrative side. So I never really ever, I guess, promoted myself as a playwright, even though I was writing plays during those jobs, like I was working on plays and stuff like that. But no, but I really do hope that this is, will give me a chance to reintroduce myself as a playwright.
Jason Tamborini:
Awesome. That's great. That's awesome. I look forward to that as well. And so, that's really all the big questions I have for you. I try to end any interview I do with just some random questions to just kind of have a little bit of fun. So I sent you the list.
I just want to know, I'm curious, robots or dinosaurs?
Michael Mobley:
Because of what's going on right now with AI and this ChatGPT or whatever, I'm going to have to say robots because I want them on my side.
Jason Tamborini:
Okay. On your side, yeah. Trains or planes?
Michael Mobley:
I'm gonna go with trains, even though planes are faster. But I like trains. I like trains.
Jason Tamborini:
I take the train anytime I can, especially for long trips. I go visit my brother, he lives in Florida and it's a 16, 18 hour train ride, but it's so much better. I don't love flying, so.
Michael Mobley:
Oh.
Jason Tamborini:
Salsa or guacamole?
Michael Mobley:
I'll have to go guacamole.
Jason Tamborini:
Okay. Yeah. Hey look, I get it. And the last one. Time machine, or magic wand?
Michael Mobley:
Oh my goodness. I'm going to have to with the magic wand.
Jason Tamborini:
Okay.
Michael Mobley:
Yeah I have to go with the magic wand. I can change things, in time. And I don't have to go back in time.
Jason Tamborini:
See, I agree. I thought the same thing. I was like, I mean, yeah, I could travel in time, but I could also just change it with this magic. I agree. I agree.
Michael Mobley:
Right.
Jason Tamborini:
Makes sense. Awesome.
Well Michael, thank you so very, very much for your time today. I'm very much looking forward to getting a chance to do this workshop with you. The workshop performance, or I guess the readings, dates again are May 19th and 20th. The evening of the 19th and the afternoon of the 20th. Thank you again for your time and we'll talk again soon.