A daily chronicle of creativity in film, TV, music, arts, and entertainment, produced by Southern California Public Radio and broadcast from November 2014 – March 2020. Host John Horn leads the conversation, accompanied by the nation's most plugged-in cultural journalists.
Ever had a really bad family dinner? Maybe you should make a play out of it.
That's part of what inspired Stephen Karam to write "The Humans," a drama that unfolds over a Thanksgiving dinner.
Three generations of a family, plus a potential son-in-law, gather in a dingy New York apartment, not so much to break bread but to cross swords. There are plenty of laughs in the show, but “The Humans” is ultimately a serious look into what binds a family together — and what tears it apart.
"The Humans" was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize (it lost to "Hamilton"), and it's currently playing to packed houses at the Helen Hayes Theater in New York. Today it received six Tony nominations including a nod for Best Play.
When The Frame's John Horn spoke with Karam, the playwright espoused the value of day jobs because "they allow us to be fearless in our writing" and the joy of having a Broadway hit without being a musical spectacle.
I want to go back to a moment, more than a year ago, when "The Humans" was just starting its run at an off-Broadway theater — it had yet to be reviewed, and Scott Rudin, a movie producer who might be best known [in theater circles] for producing "The Book of Mormon," came to see your play. What happened next?
He saw a Sunday matinee before the show had even opened. We were in the last week of previews before press would start arriving, and I got a call saying he'd seen the show and liked it very much. That was a good feeling. Then there was another call, maybe a day later, saying that Scott was interested in moving the show to Broadway. [laughs]
That was certainly unprecedented in my own career, but for anyone in the industry, for a play with no stars or reviews to have someone aspire to move it to Broadway was astonishing.
I think I was even a little skeptical, like, This can't possibly be true. But it was all true — Scott had put down a deposit and the wheels were already spinning before we had even had our opening night. I don't know that I'll ever have an experience like that again.
Not only were you incredibly well-reviewed once you moved to Broadway, but also, when I saw the show, there was not an empty seat in the house. You're doing incredible business while going up against shows like "Hamilton" or "Book of Mormon," so what's the different satisfaction of seeing the full houses in addition to the great reviews?
My family's already seen the show, so part of me is astonished. Who are these people coming to see the show night after night? [laughs] I'm a fan of musical theater, so it's been heartening to see that people really do still have an appetite to see a good, well-told story that has a similar chance of taking them on a ride that's just as powerful as a show like "Aladdin" or "Hamilton."
I think there's this myth that a play without a celebrity star or a celebrity playwright can't survive on Broadway, and I think it's been exciting to see that none of those rules actually exist.
I think one of the things that's notable about the play is that even though it's dealing with some difficult issues, it's really funny. Was that your intention in writing it? Did you anticipate how funny it would play, or are you constantly surprised by how light the audience takes a lot of the story?
None of it is necessarily intentional, but I do think that people and life in general are hilarious and entertaining, and I also think life's sad and dark and complicated and a little scary. [laughs] So I don't know that I'll ever write a play that doesn't have a lot of laughs, because that's just where I live, so it's where my writing lives.
You wrote "Speech and Debate" in your 20s. Do you remember the day or the week when you realized that you could support yourself as a playwright and not have a day job?
[laughs] That's an interesting question. There wasn't an exact moment, only because I held onto my day job for a very, very long time. "Speech and Debate" opened and closed and I was still working as an administrative assistant at a Canadian law firm here in the city, and I was there for about seven years.
It was 30 hours a week, and I quickly discovered that the security that that job was giving me allowed me to take more risks as a writer. I knew it was okay if "Speech and Debate" flopped, or if my next play had been a flop, and that created its own kind of excitement for me.
I stuck with that job until I opened "Sons of the Prophet" and only left because I didn't have enough vacation days to cover everything. I'd written a libretto for a chamber opera, and the timing of that production plus "Sons of the Prophet" opening in Boston meant that I didn't have enough vacation days to participate in these projects.
So I only left when I didn't really have an option, and then "Sons of the Prophet" ended up doing pretty well. For better or worse, here I am as a playwright without a day job. [laughs] But there's a part of me that thinks all playwrights should have day jobs, if they allow us to be fearless in our writing.