Pink Milk
nytheatre.com q&a preview by Alex Paul Young
July 11, 2012
What is your job on this show?
Playwright.
Who are your heroes?
In theatre: Federico Garcia Lorca.
In writing: Sylvia Plath.
In art: Frida Kahlo.
In music: Bjork.
Also: all my artistic collaborators and of course, Alan Turing.
Complete this sentence: My show is the only one in FringeNYC that...?
My show is the only one in FringeNYC that has a talking hypodermic needle.
My show is the only one in FringeNYC that has a dance sequence about math calculations set to electronica music.
My show is the only one in FringeNYC that has a nostril stroking sex scene.
Why did you want to write/direct/produce/act in/work on this show?
Pink Milk started as a series of poems based on real events from Alan Turing's life mashed up with recountings of Tyler Clementi's 2010 suicide. I wanted to write something in response to the gay teen suicides in the American news and after finding Alan Turing, whose life mirrored Tyler Clementi's, I was spurred to write a magic tragedy that looked at our world yesterday and today. What started as a series of poems became the script being performed today at FringeNYC.
Which cartoon character would you identify your show with: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Mickey Mouse, Marge Simpson?
Mickey Mouse. He's composed, like the polite, rule oriented world that Pink Milk takes place in. He plays many different characters, like the vast array of characters in Pink Milk (anything from a robot to a male prostitute). He is associated with fairy tales but is more contemporary. And we all know it, he's gay.
How important is diversity to you in the theater you see/make?
The theatre I make always shrives to include characters of various sexual orientations, as that is the world we live in. It's important for me to include characters that can be played by actors regardless of age or looks or gender. The Authority Figures in Pink Milk for example, can be played by a 20 year old woman or a 50 year old man. Because theatre uses so many other art forms (music, dance, poetry, visual art), it only seems fitting that the other elements, such as casting, in theatre, have this collage like quality that makes sense for our collage like world.
