A CONVERSATION WITH JULIA JORDAN BY MAYA SINGER

The first thing you should know about playwright Julia Jordan is that she lives on a houseboat. OK, maybe not a houseboat; technically, Jordan notes, it’s a motor yacht. And, OK, maybe that's not the “first thing” you should know about her, either, but it's something, and somehow, it seems indicative. Of something. Right-brainers reading this may consider the idea that the distinctive ebb and flow of Jordan's bantering dialogue in St. Scarlet was suggested by the waves rolling beneath her as she wrote: back and forth and roiled by undertow.

The pragmatist may note the fierce intelligence of a playwright who has managed to find the loophole in the grind of Manhattan real estate. Either way, facts are facts. Julia Jordan lives on a houseboat (“MOTOR YACHT!!”), it's parked on the edge of the Upper West Side, and that's where I tracked her down to learn more about St. Scarlet the play and Julia Jordan the playwright.

MS: Wow! Houseboat!

JJ: Motor yacht.

MS: How did this happen?

JJ: Oh, you know - happy accident. It started out as a stop-gap; they used to rent them out but when the city made it illegal, all the landlords were selling them on the cheap. I'd already lived there for three years and I really liked the lifestyle - I mean, one of the things about this city is that you can slide into a really intense disconnect from the actual, physical labor of life; it's all taken care of for you. People go to the gym to be active. But here, I've got to work. I like that. It feels good to be physically tired from work. And I like to accomplish a few things without taxing my brain.

MS: Is that attitude relevant to St. Scarlet?

JJ: (laughs) I don't know. It's just a kind of antidote to writing. One of the things about being a writer is that you pretty much live in your head. Working on the boat keeps me connected to the fact that I have a body.
MS: Writing can also be very isolating.

JJ: When you live on a boat everyone wants to come over. That's probably why my favorite part of being a playwright is being with the actors, going to the bar after rehearsals. Sometimes I talk myself into working on a script with the thought that if I finish it and it's good, then I'll get to see people. I even love auditions, especially musical auditions because they come in and sing to you, but that's a different story. It's just always a relief to get away from the desk. I love actors - the cast is going to laugh when they read this because I threw a big hissy fit one day about respecting my literariness. That isn't even a word, is it?

MS: No. But thank you very much for getting me squarely back on-topic. You actually trained as an actress, right?

JJ: I was an extremely mediocre actress.

MS: How did you end up a playwright?

JJ: I went to the Neighborhood Playhouse, Meisner technique - that drill. We were given an assignment to write monologues for ourselves, personal, true stories to help us learn what it felt like to become attached to material, I guess. But I didn't really want to tell my class anything too personal-people were pouring out their deepest and darkest....you know. So I made one up. No harm done, except it was the best performance of my life. All my actress friends wanted to use my monologue for auditions. It had some poetical flourishes. You know, a little purple. A lot purple. But I like purple writing still and then I LOVED it. But the ladies were all going on the same auditions and some of them started to complain that they needed their own, so I just kept writing them. I had this little cottage-industry of audition monologues happening, and one thing led to another. Someone heard about a ten minute play festival...

MS: And the rest is history. What about St. Scarlet? What inspired you to write this play?

JJ: Oh god - what an impossible question! Well, for one thing, I have two sisters, older and younger, as well as two brothers. I tend to write a lot about family. In this play, it's probably fair to say that Rose is a composite of me and my older sister, and Ruby is a composite of me and my younger sister. My younger sister inspires quite a bit of what I write - she has this very idiosyncratic, optimistic way of seeing the world. She was in the World Trade Center when it was attacked and I thought she had lost that optimism for good. But no. It's back.

MS: In other words, all writing is semi-autobiographical?

JJ: All writing, maybe, but not all characters. Not Vinnie.

MS: Not Vinnie?

JJ: Nope. Vinnie is based on a whole bunch of guys that used to hang out at this bar I managed a while ago, Lucky Strike down in SoHo. They'd sit at the bar, shoot their mouths off and I'd eavesdrop and make mental notes. I think there are probably whole passages in this play I paraphrased directly from those guys. There is a bit of Ivan Martin, the actor who played him, that has snuck in over the years.

MS: Vinnie does have some tremendous lines - he jumps off the page.

JJ: I can't take all the credit.

MS: Still, that's a bit autobiographical.

JJ: No, it's pure plagiarism.

MS: And the setting - Minnesota is almost a fifth character in St. Scarlet. You seem to have a real affection for the culture.

JJ: “Culture?”

MS: Oh, look at the jaded New York City playwright, disowning her roots....

JJ: (laughs) No, no - not at all. I do have an affection for it. My family moved around a lot, and I've done a lot of traveling but I spent my formative years in Minnesota. I feel like I know that place, I know who the people are, and I still feel like one of them. To be honest, when I take a step back and really think about the fact that I'm doing what I'm doing with my life - a playwright in New York City! It kind of floors me. It doesn't seem possible when you grow up in the Midwest. There, I'd never met an actor who actually made a living from it. Not that they aren't there, it just isn't an everyday profession like it is here. I didn't exactly grow up going to the theater all the time. The Gutherie, the classics, but not new plays. Oh, except for August Wilson. He lived a few blocks away and premiered a lot of shows there. But that wasn't until later. So, it's all totally untrue. I had quite a good inadvertent theatrical education. But like kids everywhere, I was more into movies.

MS: I was going to ask you about that. A lot of the dialogue in St. Scarlet has a very 1940s, screwball rhythm.

JJ: Yeah, I was playing with that rat-a-tat banter. I wanted this to be a fast play, literally upbeat. It's hard to write upbeat material. Melancholy is much easier. I learned that the hard way.

MS: Not that this is a total, straight-up comedy...

JJ: No. Chris (Messina) and I talked about that. We felt it was really important for St. Scarlet to be a drama with some humor, as opposed to something played for laughs. I mean it's about sex and death which are both hilarious and all but...

MS: Last question. Even though the action of the play is very homebound, there's this interesting pressure represented by the idea of the road. Characters are either aching to get on it, or they've had enough of other places. Wanderlust and anti-wanderlust.

JJ: Absolutely. I love road trips. I've driven cross-country four or five times, with friends and alone. And soon I'll be doing it again on motorcycle, which will be a whole new thing. But there's nothing like moving around to make you appreciate the pleasures of staying put.