by Lesley Bell
Daily Lobo
50-year-old men write plays about people in their 20s. And some people in their 20s are sick of it.
UNM student Kristen Simpson cites these plays about 20-somethings written by 50-year-old men as one of her inspirations for writing her most recent play, "Let it Get to You," part of the Words Afire Festival.
A 50-year-old mainstream playwright hasn't been 20 in 30 years and can't portray this age group with much accuracy, Simpson said. She wanted to write a show to represent this age group without adult authority figures like moms or clergy intervening.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
"On one level, it's about that point in your life where you're in your 20s, out of college, but not quite 'adult' yet," she said.
This age group is portrayed as either vapid and shallow or coke-snorting prostitutes when they are much more aware, she said.
"I wanted to write something about our culture that was happening now, in 2004-05. We don't even date anymore," she said.
On a more plot-centric level, it's about seven kids in a house getting drunk, as well as being about a girl from Alabama who moves to a place in the Southwest, which has some parallels with Simpson's own life.
"I've never written a full-length play of this magnitude. I really wanted to delve into the darker instincts," she said.
Still, comedic things do occur, such as someone falling in vomit.
Simpson said her play is much like life - intense in humor and pain.
"Sometimes the only way to deal with your pain is to laugh at it," Simpson said.
Theater has been an important part of Simpson's life since she was 5, when her father signed her up for acting classes to help her with her stuttering problem. By age 9, she was living in New York and performing in shows on Broadway, including Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" for an entire year. Simpson said she made a mixed CD for each character. When one character, Roux, seemed to be dead weight, Simpson almost cut him entirely from the script until she spent a week compiling his biography. Now he is one of the most essential characters in the play, she said.
"I've been having dreams about these characters for weeks," she said. "It's important to have a good sense of self in order to have a good sense of the people you're creating."
She describes working in theater as a brilliant and perfect experience.
"It's got a lot of emotional weight for me," she said. "It's my first child, my first boyfriend. It's everything to me, which theater should be because, if it's not, why the hell are you doing it?"
