Antigone & Torture

An interview with Jessica Cluess, author of Anna is Saved.

Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your writing

I grew up in Los Angeles, but I had to leave because it just wasn’t cold enough. I went to Northwestern University, really enjoyed it, and stayed on in Chicago. As for my writing, I’d say it comes out of performance. I’ve had substantially more professional training as an actor than as a writer, so how a sentence feels in a person’s mouth, whether it flows or not, is always a priority for me. I’ve performed my own work and enjoy it. In high school I was something of a monologist and I did a lot of comedic work, which made it strange when I came to college and just started doing drama after drama. I suppose it’s all changed the way I write; I like a balance of comedy and drama in my stories.

Describe your play Anna is Saved and the inspiration for it.

Anna is Saved came out of my feelings about the play ‘Antigone.’ I’ve had a lot of experience with that play. I studied it in class, and I was in a very avant garde production of it. (The central motif was a can of Coke.) Everybody was going on about what a hero Antigone was, and I just couldn’t get over the fact that she scorned her sister, her last remaining relative, and told her to get lost because she needed to be a glorious martyr. Some will beg to differ with my interpretation, but I think she’s more complex and unlikable than some may believe. So there was that, and then I thought about an experience in high school where some girls were going to a rally at UCLA to protest the war. When I talked to them about it, they revealed that they were doing it because it was an excuse to cut class and dress up in their parents’ vintage hippie clothes, and sort of ‘live out the 60s.’ So I had a classic figure, someone with whom I wanted to experiment, and the image of youth protesting and shouting, not because they want to change the world, but because they want to be important or get noticed. Then you throw in torture policies in the Bush years, and I was all set.

What is your writing process like?

My writing process changes all the time. Sometimes it’s the classic ‘go to cafes with a notebook and work’ thing, sometimes I just sit down and outline on my computer, and sometimes I actually grab my tape recorder and sort of act it out, try out dialogue, see if it feels right in my mouth. The tape recorder part can kind of worry the people who live with me. There can be a little shouting with that one. I try to do that one when no one’s home to be bothered. Otherwise it just looks insane.

How has your play changed through its involvement in LeapFest?

By the time the play got to Leapfest, it’d been through three workshop processes. I wrote it in a class my senior year of college, a student group performed it as part of a new play festival, and then Stage Left took it for their Down Stage Left workshop program last winter. So when it got here, its bones were already pretty clearly built. Because the basic foundation was laid, (and because, at an hour, it’s pretty damn short), we were able to delve deeper into character; why do they do what they do, what do they really want, if they have a change of heart does it make sense. The character of Baumer, the General’s right hand man, got a complete overhaul. He started off as this fat, slovenly fifty something who had no real experience in anything, and he turned into this rough and ready young man who was an accomplished soldier. It made the play so much better. On top of that, we changed dialogue, added and subtracted monologues, and just tightened as much as we could. What I love about the Leapfest process is how it is such a bridge between a reading and a production; Anna is Saved is, in many senses, a very physical play, and actually seeing the violence and physical comedy makes SUCH a difference to an audience. It makes it funnier, and also more terrifying.

Writing comedy is notoriously difficult. Do you find the workshop process more or less valuable in working on comedy?

I think whether or not comedy works onstage comes right down to the acting. Granted, writing and directing are a huge factor, but if the actors don’t get it, no one else will. I knew the workshop process would only be helpful if the actors got the comedy, and luckily they did. The play has five actors, and they all had different levels of comedic experience, but they all delivered. The workshop was lots of fun because the actors all brought their own ideas and funny moments to the table, and a lot of it worked and stayed in. Plus, ‘Anna is Saved’ isn’t exactly a riotous farce from start to finish. It starts off very funny, and then slowly it becomes not…funny…at all. The actors were very adept at handling the transition. They’re pretty fantastic all around.

What's next for you?

I’m currently working on a one-woman show called ‘What If He Dies, And We’re Still In Texas?’ detailing my life on the road in a traveling children’s theatre troupe, and I’ve got a few other things I’m working on. But I’m twenty-four. I’ll take whatever you’ve got!

You can see Anna is Saved on May 27 at 7:30pm.