Playwright Justin Tanner ("El Nino"): "This Play Saved My Life"

Show Notes

Dennis visits the Highland Park home of one of his favorite playwright Justin Tanner to talk about his first play in seven years "El Nino" about a woman dealing with writers block and chronic pain who moves back in with her parents. He talks about the real-life situations that inspired the play, writing it on an old-fashioned typewriter and without smoking pot and the idea that suffering can lead to something great. He also talks about the social aspect of doing theater in L.A., working on TV shows with Amy Sherman-Palladino and David Fincher having Laurie Metcalf champion his work the famous faces that showed up at his plays, like Cliff Robertson and Clint Eastwood. He talks about the web series he created Avenue 43, getting a shout-out from The Guardian and how working on it made him fall in love with editing. Other topics include: how his plays tell him what they're about, what it feels like when a play closes, his new script consulting business, the movie he's seen the most, the movie he saw when he was way too young, his biggest on-stage mishap, the first and last time he stole something, the celebrity death that hit him the hardest, the worst job he ever had, why he writes, his lowest point professionally and what got him out of it. http://www.roguemachinetheatre.net/