House, Divided
 La Tempestad
 The Ballad of John Wesley Reed
 Girl Science
 The Allure of Oriental Wisdom
 Memorial Day (formerly Varia)
 Pride of the Lion
 The Dostoyevsky Man


 Monica for Chanukah
 Angie and Arnie Sanguine
 Edward and Ellie Supine
 The Lion Eats His Lunch
 The Lion in His Lair
 The Lion Leaves His Mark
 Prayers


 But Who's Counting?
 Emma Goldman Imagines the Millenium


 Just Before the War Between the Plates
 I Can Handle That


 Talking  with Lee Blessing

...with Tom Coash
...with Mary Fengar Gail
...with Richard Kalinowsky
...with Jamie Pachino
...with David Rambo
...with Jason Sherman
...with Naomi Wallace
...with Tom Gibbons
...with Dick Goldberg

INTERACT: Like many InterAct plays in the past, JAMBULU has become instantly relevant because of current events. The play raises questions about race and identity, and to what extent our social and political values and even our behaviors arise from our backgrounds.

MARY FENGAR GAIL: The whole question of identity is being confronted day after day in Fortress America, but can a person truly be identified? Beyond the fragility of the body is the mystery of personality, character and temperament, the profound influences of family, peers, politics, literature, and art, and what of the sacred mystery of the soul?

INTERACT: There is the suggestion in the play that humans cannot exist without conflict, and the only way to stop belligerence is to evolve beyond our humanity. Is that your personal view?

MARY FENGAR GAIL: Being the wickedest person I know, I don't dare define, much less judge the whole of humanity and its capacity to evolve; however, my characters do both and often aspire to lead ethical lives, though they rarely succeed since they're usually plagued with weak natures and bad habits. The characters that most intrigue me - artists, scientists, adventurers, criminals, clerics, spies, children, misfits, and the mad - tend to believe that the great purpose of life is to transcend their creaturely identities, to live in a world where the intellect and imagination are primary. So to define themselves in terms of race, age, gender, or ethnicity is to be limited, balkanized, and stranded on a smaller planet. For playwrights, imagining other cultures, other races, can be liberating, allowing them to live outside themselves, to learn to tolerate and even embrace identities they once thought insufferable.

Your question also asks if the only way to stop belligerence is to evolve beyond our humanity, but it isn't belligerence we should be trying to stop. Belligerence can be a positive quality, leading to intellectual and creative acts. After all, to the true questioner, nothing is sacred, and the search for the truth requires relentless determination, even contentiousness. Members of the Taliban are not belligerent; they're obedient - following the dogma of a cult that demands conformity and adherence to rigid rules that keep them infantilized, intolerant, and unimaginative. The obedient abdicate the responsibility of true adulthood, giving up their moral decision making process to leaders like Osama bin Laden. Belligerence requires a sense of autonomy, of courage, of being allowed to make ethical and moral choices, the very freedoms cultists and theocrats discourage and despise. That women were enshrouded, that music was forbidden to be heard or books read, that the ancient Buddhas that belonged to the history of all humanity were destroyed - these were not acts of belligerence but of blind obedience, moral cowardice, and a contempt for beauty, creativity, and soul-soaring freedom.

INTERACT: We know you have done a lot of research on a whole range of subjects in writing this play, orchids, UFOs, American and African history, and much else. There are a lot of disparate elements in this play that are brought together in a quite imaginative way. What led you to this scenario?

MARY FEGAR GAIL: : It is usually the choice of locality that becomes the stage setting that leads to every other element in my plays. With JAMBULU, I began with a vivid picture of the Mojave Desert which I've crossed several times. Then I built RIDELF, a large edifice complete with a research laboratory, a greenhouse, and a conference room. Then the characters materialized, and I christened them, fathomed their natures, and set them loose. The fact that their varied professions and hobbies coincided with my own interests is not a coincidence, and a great excuse to read about subjects that intrigue me. James Joyce said that for a literary work to be artful, it must have wholeness, harmony and radiance, and I believe that the radiance comes from the juxtaposition of opposites: in personalities, professions, religious and political beliefs, and in the syntax of their speech. My plays all begin as collages and then comes the arduous work of making the disparate elements into a coherent whole. Aristotle wrote that "the essence of drama is story" by which he meant plot, and even in these "postmodern" times, there remains this childlike longing to have a tale told. I still see that as part of the dramatists' obligation, so I rely on my characters to assemble themselves into some sort of story while I follow them around and take notes.

INTERACT: What is your writing process like?

MARY FENGAR GAIL: With JAMBULU, after I gathered my notes into a large three ring binder, I went to bed. I wrote my first draft in long hand while propped on a bedsitter. This is because I once suffered a long bout of bronchitis and was forced to write in bed. Miraculously, the pen danced across the page and since that day, I haven't been inspired to write anywhere else. For me, the bedroom is a sequestered chamber, the place where dreams are still wafting about and the rest of the house can't beckon for attention, not to mention the phone, fax, and email. After working in bed all morning, I retreat downstairs to the computer and type and print my scribblings. Then I take the pages upstairs for revisions and on it goes: upstairs, downstairs, upstairs, downstairs, writing and rewriting until a coherent draft emerges. Then actors are summoned to the house where they're wined and dined, and read their roles in a state of uninhibited inebriation. A reading never fails to inspire more revisions and more readings until the script is finally ready to be copied, bound and peddled to theatres like InterAct where a workshop with professional actors leads to even more revisioning.

INTERACT: What is your greatest challenge or obstacle as a playwright?

MARY FENGAR GAIL: The biggest challenge facing me as a playwright is the American Theatre's relentless preference for naturalistic carpet-slipper plays that tread softly, offend no one, and simply mirror or affirm our quotidian lives (which television and movies do very well). As a fantasist, I dream of a theatre of heightened passions that takes me to unfamiliar worlds, a theatre that's imaginative, subversive, and features brave protagonists of mythic stature in plays that require a fusion of all the arts. I long to see and create plays that communicate compelling ideas and images by employing slanted speech that risks being heretical, scenery of unfamiliar, even alien landscapes, and acting styles that reach beyond the confines of verisimilitude towards song and dance. I truly believe that the theatre, with its roots in myth, poetry, and spectacle, is starving for visionary creators to continue its honored purpose as a vital, confrontational art form. But it also needs courageous producers, directors, and audiences willing to participate intellectually and emotionally so that going to the theatre.

INTERACT: JAMBULU, for all of its serious themes, is a fun play, funny and sexy. This is part of what makes your writing so attractive to us, the ability of your plays to evoke such seemingly separate response in the same space. Is this your personal view as well, that we keep going by finding love and sex and humor as palliative to fear and conflict?

MARY FENGAR GAIL: All my plays are comic dramas, yet their themes tend to be dark and apocalyptic. The characters are often wicked, misguided, unfortunate, and their demise inevitable - so how can I convey all this in a tolerable way if not with humor? Humor lets us escape all the horrors of life, to gleefully mock the gruesome inevitability of our own deaths and all those we cherish. Without laughter there would be no joy, without joy no hope, and to abdicate hope is to give up on the world which to me is a crime against the future and all the children destined to dwell there. Emerson spoke of optimism as a moral imperative to living in America, and I believe he's right. The most grim and savage tale can still find redemption with a line of humor, irony, or wit. Laughter obliterates despair, even manic laughter. Ha, ha! Ho, ho!!!