Blowhard, Esq. writes:

From the introduction to an interview with a Brooklyn playwright:

This is what sets her apart from the great percentage of the theater’s current pack of trust-fund scribes and fake-hot-button playwrights — Callaghan speaks straight to the core of one’s being, skewering the comfortable conventions that have turned so much theater into a place where wealthy people digest their dinner. Callaghan wants to make you throw up, then search for the answers of your life in your own vomit.

The whole thing reads like a parody:

Tommy Smith (Rail): Why write a play?

Sheila Callaghan: Because it’s a terrible fucking idea and impossible to get right.

Rail: No, really.

Callaghan: I’m serious. I like to fail at impossible tasks. It’s like I’m striving for something superhuman, which feels kind of noble.

Rail: What does it say about your narrative trajectory that your new play begins with enthusiastic salad-eating and ends with a bittersweet cake feast?

Callaghan: I kind of feel like the answer here lies in the question.

…

Rail: “When I’m not writing plays, I’m….”

Callaghan: Feeding my gentle, curious, easily distracted son. Teaching Spin and yoga. Trying to sleep. Thinking about fucking. Trying not to think about fucking. Imbibing green drinks and cold coffee. Looking at my stomach in the mirror. Buying anti-aging serums from Sephora. Checking my email. Texting dangerously in my car. Training to become a mogul. Finding coping strategies for my diseased brain. Wondering if PTSD has a sell-by date.

I have to think half the fun of being a New York artist is carrying on like this in interviews.

Related

• I offered a few books to counter the Modernist Narrative.