Harvard Playwright Spins Social Parable in Providence

Having written plays with titles such as “Trojan Barbie,” “Mothergun,” and “Pussy Boy,” Australian playwright and Harvard lecturer Christine M. Evans is not exactly looking to be uncontroversial.

Evans, the Briggs-Copeland lecturer on English and American literature and language, is set to debut her latest play, “Weightless,” at the Perishable Theatre in Providence on Monday, Oct. 29. The play is about a family living on the top of skyscraper who don’t want to acknowledge that it’s slowly cracking apart beneath their feet.

“It’s set in a mirror world, a distorted version of the current world a bit in the future,” Evans says.

The play indirectly addresses the American public’s attitude toward international affairs, according to her.

“Americans seem to have their eyes inwards and are contentedly isolated from the rest of the world,” she says. “This observation of Americans isolated from and living above the rest of the world turned into the image of a very high, very shiny penthouse. The family hears rumblings and grumblings from outside, but this all didn’t register until too late.”

PERSONAL EXPOSITION

Although she must await reviews of her latest endeavor, Evans is no stranger to success.

She has been honored with a Fulbright Award in Visual and Performing Arts, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, the Rella Lossy Playwriting Award, and the Weston Award in Dramatic Writing.

Currently, Evans teaches introductory courses in playwriting and screenwriting at Harvard, and will teach advanced courses in each this spring.

Although she did not begin writing plays until after receiving her bachelor’s degree in English, Evans felt pulled toward writing early in life.

“In a way, most writers know what they wish to do from a very early age. Most have a sacred inner voice that tells us we’re a writer,” she says.

Playwriting was a natural progression for Evans, who worked in theatrical production, choral arrangement and conducting prior to picking up the pen.

“In my case I was able to get a good sense of what was required to put a play on before I even began to write my first script,” she says.

The decision to venture into playwriting was sparked by a frustration with her theatrical experiences. “I worked with experimental and devised performance. In some ways this theater was very interesting—quite complex in the staging and physical layers—but the weakest and least interesting parts of the production often was the text, which frustrated me,” she says.

Her first play, “My Vicious Angel,” received critical acclaim in her native Australia. Following the success of “My Vicious Angel,” Evans decided to pursue an MFA in playwriting and a Ph.D. at Brown University.

She has written five full-length plays and multiple short plays, all of which have been produced.

‘SENSE OF VERTIGO’

Evans says the writing process is one that she almost doesn’t control.

“I’ve found that the subject matter chooses us. Playwrights tend to have things that obsess them whether try acknowledge them to or not,” says Evans. “My plays all deal with the collision of the interior and poetic world with external world of politics. They mix a kind of poetic intensity with gritty real world situations.”

For aspiring playwrights, Evans recommends theatrical participation, in any and all capacities.

“The first thing to do is to get involved and to write all the time. The best playwrights are people who are involved in theater on all levels,” she says. “Playwrights know their craft from working with actors and directors. I highly recommend interning in a theater and to become involved in technical theater,” which mirrors her own experiences.

Evans’ latest play, “Weightless,” was inspired by her experience of relocating to the United States. “Immediately upon coming here, I noticed that my country vanished off the map. All the pegs that anchored my culture and my history were gone,” she says. “I felt that I was coming adrift from my cultural mooring, which created an intense sense of vertigo,”

“It’s about fear and control and longing, and explores how people desperately want to connect but maintain life via surface means,” Evans says. “The play confronts how people manage the chaos of life through superficial means, and how the deeper questions of life burst through anyway.”