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Playwright Jacqueline Goldfinger goes Goth in her new play The Oath |
“Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion” is a saying that playwright Jacqueline Goldfinger uses to explain the appreciation for dark humor, still common in the American South, as answer to the small and large indignities of life. Ms. Goldfinger’s new play The Oath presented by MTWorks, now playing at the Arclight Theater, puts this sensibility on steroids in the tradition of the Southern Gothic novelists Katherine Anne Porter and William Faulkner. United Stages wanted to know…
Tell me about The Oath. What’s it about?
The Oath is about a wandering preacher during the Great Depression who’s trapped in a small Southern town, and in an even smaller house, with two sisters who give him the opportunity to be obscenely successful but at a price.
How are the hard times depicted in The Oath the same and/or different from today’s?
I think that, in the current economic climate, people are being forced to make difficult choices. That’s exactly what happened during the Great Depression, and happens in The Oath: which of your beliefs are you willing to sell off and at what price? And when is it worth it and when is it not worth it?
What inspired you to write a “Southern Gothic tale”?
I grew up loving Southern Gothic fiction: Kate Chopin, Katherine Anne Porter, William Faulkner, etc., and thought it would translate beautifully to the stage.
The Southern Gothic mood for The Oath: “Darkly funny and thrillingly horrifying.” Set design by Blair Mielnik, lighting design by Dan Gallagher
For those unfamiliar with the Southern Gothic genre what’s your favorite way to describe it?
Southern Gothic is a style that gives epic importance to everyday situations and embraces the macabre as a necessary part of life. It also tends to be alternately darkly funny and thrillingly horrifying.
You grew up in Tallahassee, Florida. What about your experience there has made its way into your plays?
Everyone in the South is a storyteller, just naturally. The main thing I learned growing up is that telling the truth isn’t as important as telling a really funny or sad or adventurous story. And that by telling a great story you are telling a deeper truth.
What is the best thing anyone has said to you after seeing a performance of one of your plays?
“Reminds me of Carson McCullers.”
The oddest?
“I didn’t know anyone wrote about the South anymore.”
You grew up in the South, but your educational and professional travels have brought you to Southern California and Philadelphia. What do West and East-coasters need to “get” about the Southern sensibility to truly appreciate The Oath?
I think most everybody—and that’s a Southern phrase there, y’all, “most everybody”—has read Southern literature at some point, so my work is pretty accessible. But it’s good to remember that Southerners laugh at whatever’s funny, whether it’s appropriate to laugh in the situation or not. There’s a Southern phrase, “Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.”
New Yorkers often read in twenty-minute spurts, in transit, on a subway car going from one place to another. What is a “must read” for your audiences on the way to The Oath?
The short story A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner.
How did you and MTWorks find each other?
I submitted The Oath for their staged reading program and they were interested in producing it!
Oath rehearsal. “I love working in New York! The artists are amazing.” Playwright Jacqueline Goldfinger meets actress Sarah Chaney (Ofah) in rehearsal for MTWorks’ production of The Oath. Photo by Anotonio Miniño
You’ve had one of your plays produced in the downtown NY International Fringe Festival and now at the Arclight in the west 70s. Anything special about seeing your plays produced in NYC?
I love working in New York! The artists are amazing. The community is so vibrant and thriving. And I get to see work that I’d never see in other areas of the country.
What is your next project?
Last year, I was commissioned to write an adaptation of Little Women for North Coast Repertory Theatre in San Diego. We’re going to workshop it this summer and they’ll produce it in February–March, 2010. In New York, I am a resident playwright at New Perspectives Theatre and have just begun writing a new play about a very civilized cannibal in the Victorian South. I also have two plays in development at theaters in Philadelphia and we’ll have workshops and/or readings during the 2009–2010 season.
In the most perfect of all worlds, what three words would we need to Google to bring up the name “Jacqueline Goldfinger”?
“Pretty Young Thing”…. I just think it would get a lot of hits.
Thank you very much!
