A Conversation with Jove Tripp Thompson and Ryan Hartley
Thompson and Hartley discuss the new play THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF BLACK JESUS IN SUNDOWN, ALABAMA
Josh Feye: Hello, Jove! Hello, Ryan! How are you guys?
Ryan Hartley: Oh, good!
Jove Tripp Thompson: Good!
RH: How are you?
JF: I'm doing well. Thank you, guys, for doing this and for having me in rehearsal the other day. It was really fun to get to see you guys work. We’re discussing The Immaculate Conception of Black Jesus in Sundown, Alabama. It’s Jove’s new play and Ryan, you’re the director for this piece and at the rehearsal I observed you started working with dialogue, I was curious do you always start with dialogue or does it depend on the play?
RH: Well, I believe that was our second rehearsal. So, in the first rehearsal, we started with finding the foundation of a physical vocabulary for the characters. Before we read anything out of the script, I had the actors find different ways of moving and sitting, they are sitting for the majority of the piece. We had the baby doll in there from the beginning so that our actors could hold the doll and get that in their bodies. We did our first couple of table reads with that physical foundation intact and with the accent. I never had them read the text without an accent. That was something I'd asked them to do before rehearsal began in the interest of time especially. So, yeah, I mean, we started with a physical organization, very much inspired by the Stanislavski method, and in a truncated way, got the dialogue in there. So they were reading from the script, and holding the baby all at the same time, which is fun.
JF: And Jove, this play is hilarious and what I love about it is it's tackling political themes, but it doesn't feel didactic in the way that a lot of political plays are written today. And so I'm curious how you found your way through that.
JTT: Oh, I love that. I'm happy to hear that it's funny and not too horrifying. You know, because of baby murder. When I wrote this scene in particular, this was a scene that I knew I wanted to start with because it was the most honest and genuine part of the play. The whole of this play would definitely be a satire and it would have a lot of caricatures. I think that satire can come off as very didactic. Because in a lot of ways, we make a point by making fun of things. But when I was writing this scene, I felt very emotional about this conversation between these two kids. That emotion of real people in my head talking to each other and dealing with this situation in the way that 16 year olds would. There is no satire here. The characters are not caricatures, they are 16-year-old kids who are in love and dealing with a miraculous circumstance and it's kind of everything and everyone else around them that is the satire. But these two people were never meant to be a vehicle to critique anything. They are the people that are stuck in the situation. They are the ones that are suffering from the thing that we want to critique, which is: people are fickle when it comes to faith and politics.
JF: Well, I hope you'll keep growing with the play, and seeing where it takes you. Ryan, I read that you're normally hesitant to take on plays with religious themes, so what was it about Black Jesus that drew you to it?
RH: Yeah. Well, I should clarify that. I shouldn't say hesitant. I don't work on material that is directly taken from the Bible. So, if you adapted, I don't know, the Gospel of Matthew into a play, I would say “No, thank you.” That's not going to be the play for me. I'm not going to do Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. That's a personal choice for me having been raised in an extremely conservative religious environment coming out of that and then looking around and seeing how much, the secular Western world relies on, I believe to a bizarre degree, biblical imagery, in almost kind of the same way that we still rely on like Grimm's fairy tales. I think Jove had sent me the play once upon a time and I had given it a glance and I also think it was in a slightly different form. I just kind of thought, well, you know, this isn't really something that I would personally be up for, but then when he sent it to me again, he said, you know, we're doing it, you will do this and it was again, very hesitant and then reading what he had landed on at that moment, I realized it's not an adaptation of a Bible story. It's a “what if” story. What if this thing that is reported on in the Bible happened now to somebody under very similar circumstances and in the American South, which kind of, you know, has its own political and religious connotations? And so, yeah, realizing it was a new story created in parallel to this biblical story, I found that interesting, and that aligns more with my values. So I said, sure, why not?
JF: Yeah, I love that it deals with hypocrisy and the contradictions at the heart of our political system. What's so interesting, Jove is that you’ve said your writing is subconscious. But now I want to know if there is anything that inspires you to write?
JTT: Oh God, it really depends on the show. There are things I have written where I can draw a pretty direct lineage on why I named a character a certain way or, why this scene happens or why I make this joke. A lot of the time I'm very inspired by in-yer-face plays. I love Martin McDonagh, Philip Ridley and Mark Ravenhill. I just love how their work is so balls to the wall, strange and unique and very honest to the person who's making it. So I think a lot of the inspiration probably just comes from the fact that I'm very honest about what it is that I want to write about. For this play, I just remember thinking “What if Jesus, who's probably black, is born again?” And then, I add my in-yer-face provocateur sort of background. And I say, “OK, and he’s born to white kids in a Sundown town and their parents are involved with the KKK”. That sounds in line with my ancestors who have made this type of work. I'm gonna just follow suit and I’m gonna trust that through whatever my personal experiences or whatever it is I have, grasped from the current zeitgeist, I will trust that it lives in me and that I can embody the characters. I can just write and I'll get lucky and it will be there. And sometimes I get lucky like I think I did with this play, and sometimes I'm a little less lucky. I'm very thankful for how this play has turned out.
JF: And you two are like a dynamic artistic duo. You guys collaborate quite often and I'm curious how you complement each other when you work together.
RH I think, Jove has pushed me to explore some forms that I was unfamiliar with. I mean, Jove introduced me to the in-yer-face theatre. I was aware of some of those writers in the past, but Jove really opened up my world to that style which has been fun and exciting and feels a little dangerous sometimes in a good way. And, I mean, Jove has entrusted me with this material and has allowed me to, draw my conclusions and, kind of, you know, get everything up on its feet and he didn't dictate much to me, which was very freeing. But he is on hand if I have any questions. I think it's a very strong and fruitful partnership and has a lot of potential for our future work.
JTT: I think Ryan leads a great example of what I look for in people that I want to work with and qualities I want to embody. He is someone who I can hand him a script called The Immaculate Conception of Black Jesus in Sundown, Alabama, and tell him we have a month to put this on and he goes, “OK, who are we casting?” It makes me go “OK. I'm not crazy.” There are people out there who are interested and want to work with me and are willing to do it. We don't make money doing this. We do a lot of our work pro bono and we have to, and this is a quality that Ryan has that I want to emulate more. We have to do it all ourselves and we have to be willing to push ourselves to do those things and find our people. You can't do anything unless you're willing to do it yourself. And Ryan's a great example of that and he's successful because of that. That’s why we're going to work well together; we want the same thing.
JF: And you guys have found some talented and funny actors. I was having some deep laughs while I was watching them. How has it been working with your two actors?
JTT: Oh, man, it's been such a delight. I already cracked myself up. That's probably why I am able to write as much as I do because I entertain myself. But oh God, seeing actors take on the work is just so much better, so much more entertaining because actors are brilliant and I love the actors that we have. Shoutout to Erin Viets and James DiSandro. They are phenomenal. They have really taken hold of the script despite the interesting text and despite the interesting situation, and they just sink into it and they make all these delicious discoveries and find their humor in it. That just shows that they're doing their best work. They're buying into the circumstances and I'm so thankful that we get to work with them to do that. I love them!
JF: I wanted to end by asking some fun questions. If there is a theater artist, living or dead, that you took out on the town, who would you take and what would you do?
JTT: Oh, man, that's great.
RH: You're asking somebody who doesn't go out on the town. Unfortunately, I don't know.I don't know that I have an answer to that question.
JTT: Um, I have one but it's kind of stupid. I'm taking William Shakespeare to see Oh, Mary!
JF: Oh, he would be living! I saw it last night and had the greatest time of my life.
JTT: Oh, my God. Was this your first time seeing it?
JF: Yes, I want to go back. For my last question: What are your dreams for the future of the theatre? What is your ideal?
JTT: It's subsidized by the government. The government paying for the arts would be a great start. Some people wouldn't agree with that because some people aren't comfortable with the government's influence on art making. But I don't know, that would be huge for me. Like it's affordable for everyone. Everyone can get paid and come and see it. Beyond the content, just being able to do would be wonderful.
RH: I think being able to embrace that variety of theatre with more with more financial support is vital. There has to be a more sustainable and more lucrative way of challenging our audiences. True. Um, you know, while still finding ways to entertain at the same time, I'm, you know, I'm very, uh, you know, I, I do love challenging material but I do wanna be entertained when I see a show. I'm not, I'm not there just for uh I don't know, an intellectual exercise. I think entertaining is very valuable.
THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF BLACK JESUS IN SUNDOWN, ALABAMA runs August 18th, 25th, and 29th at the Chain Theatre.
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Thank you for having us, Josh!