Kate Benson: Interview

bodyliterature.com/2014/11/11/kate-benson-interview/

A scene from "A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes" with, from left, Mia Katigbak, Evan
Thompson, Brooke Ishibashi, Nina Hellman, Heather Alicia Simms, Christian Felix and Jessica Almasy. Credit Jessica Osber

B O D Y editor Ben Williams interviewed playwright and performer Kate Benson in New York on October 3, 2014. Her play A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN
NOVEMBER ON THE BANKS OF THE GREATEST OF THE GREAT LAKES will be remounted in January at City Center, Stage II Womens
Project space.
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B O D Y: I think one of the big draws for your work is how funny a lot of it is.
Kate Benson: Thanks.
B O D Y: And its funny to read, too.
Kate Benson: Funny on the page.
B O D Y: Yeah you dont have to have a big conceptual statement you get it when you read it.
Kate Benson: With Great Lakes Ive had a lot of meetings with people who are a little confused about the notes at the beginning that say this is
how this should be staged. There are people who really want there to be a turkey, real bad.
B O D Y: And you dont want that.
Kate Benson: Ever. Never.
B O D Y: Then well definitely run that disclaimer: playwright insists Samuel Beckett insists that this is the way to do it. Dont stray.
Kate Benson: You can do whatever you want, but not that
B O D Y: Or well sue. Thats a good lead into this discussion I wanted to have, which is that I think people are excited that youre writing plays. And
when I say people, I mean downtown people because a) theyre all folks who have worked with you, at some point, mostly as an actor, and b)
youre an actor who has worked on so many new plays. So thats the lead-in to what you just said about knowing what you want, as a writer. Is that
something you feel comes from having worked on so many new shows?
Kate Benson: Yeah and going to see a lot of things. And I frequently dont know what I want, but I know what I dont want. Because Ive been in
some deadly situations.
B O D Y: Youve been in the trenches.
Kate Benson: Ive been in the trenches.
B O D Y: A lot of people have been in the trenches, but have you worked on previously produced shows before? Or have you only ever done new
work?

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Kate Benson: Well I was in Three Sisters. Done some Brecht. I was in the worst production of Julius Caesar anyones every perpetrated on
humanity.
B O D Y: If we quote you on that will you get in trouble?
Kate Benson: I dont think so, no. I think that will be ok.
(laughs)
B O D Y: Because how much worse could it get?
Kate Benson: Oh its gonna be alright. It was fun. It was a great experience. We drove all over the South.
B O D Y: Oh it was a tour
Kate Benson: A touring thing. And there was a short version and a long version.
B O D Y: What a long version for Friday nights?
Kate Benson: Pretty much. For the grown-up arts councils. And then a short one for the quick three-in-a-row school crowds. Like that.
B O D Y: Ohhhhh.
Kate Benson: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. A great adventure. And Julius Caesar. So mostly though oh and a kabuki play Benten Kozo. I was in that for a
very long time. But most of the plays Ive been in have been new. I dont know how you consider Mac Wellman. We didnt do the first production of
a lot of things, but we certainly confused a lot of people. And delighted them with novelty.
B O D Y: Macs plays are definitely an exception. Its not like youre touring Julius Caesar.
Kate Benson: Yeah.
B O D Y: Its unconventional and not frequently produced.
Kate Benson: Yes. Well, he was around, is one thing that makes it different.
B O D Y: When you say that what do you mean.
Kate Benson: He was there for rehearsals and excited about the productions and was advising and would come in to see what was happening.
B O D Y: What era is this when Mac was doing things at the New York Theater Workshop?
Kate Benson: This is when Mac was doing things at the Flea.
B O D Y: Ok.
Kate Benson: I was in Cellophane and Cleveland at the Flea, and I understudied one of the furballs in Sincerity Forever. And then coming out of
the Flea, three of us decided to do Three Americanisms in a Chashama space, and Linsay Firman was doing an Anne Washburn play called
Apparition
B O D Y: I remember that that was one of the first shows I saw in New York.
Kate Benson: The one at Chashama or the one at the Vineyard?
B O D Y: It was definitely not at the Vineyard.
Kate Benson: Yep. That thing [Apparition] had one of the scariest moments Ive ever had in the theater, which was T. Ryder Smith with the bag, and
that scene
B O D Y: T. Ryder can deliver like that
Kate Benson: But so can Anne. This fact floating across the space was like: theres a babys head in that bag. Nobody said it. They knew it was
right. I dont know how that happens. That set a very high standard for me for like you should terrify people in the theater. Thats important. I
havent figured out how to do it yet. So instead I make dumb jokes.
B O D Y: Was that one of Annes first big shows? When was The Internationalist?
Kate Benson: The Internationalist was the next year. Another incredible thing. So we jumped in at the 10 oclock spot at Chashama space, and
performed Three Americanisms on the Apparition set. And Mac was around for that a lot. That was fantastic.
B O D Y: Is there another playwright whose work youve performed in more than Macs?
Kate Benson: Thats a really good question.
B O D Y: Who are your go-to people? Do you have any? Because I feel like Ive seen you in so many shows. Have you worked with Erin Courtney
before?

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Kate Benson: I have. One of the best things that happened during St. Joan of the Stockyards was I was also in her Weasel Festival play, which
was Nanny Goat Jane. So I got to run down from PS, walk up the three blocks, walk into CSC, and then into another play, which might be one of my
most favorite things to do.
B O D Y: Its fun to jump from show to show in the same day. Or it can be anyway.
Kate Benson: If you like both shows.
B O D Y: And if you dont have to cross the whole island to get there.
Kate Benson: There can be weeping involved in that scenario, but if not, then its maybe the best. Its a kind of cognitive whiplash.
B O D Y: How long have you been working as an actor in NY?
Kate Benson: I moved here in 1991 to go to school at NYU, so depending on whether we count college, either 23 or 20 years.
B O D Y: But by 91 youre seeing downtown shows.
Kate Benson: Yeah. And by 95 I had probably figured things out and was seeing important shows.
B O D Y: Who else have you worked with the most?
Kate Benson: You know Ive done a shit ton of readings with Ken Urban, and then Ive been in two of his shows. Early readings with Jason Grote,
one of his shows. You know, so it went like that a little bit there were a lot of readings.
B O D Y: What about Bradshaw.
Kate Benson: Oh, yeah. Two Bradshaw plays. Only two? Two. Thats right. Those shows also blew things wide open for me, as far as what youre
supposed to do to an audience, and how an audience is supposed to be with you.
(laughs)
And awake.
(laughs loudly)
Brecht. Three Brecht shows.
B O D Y: You did the one with Taylor Mac and the Foundry just recently.
Kate Benson: Yeah with Lear Debessonet. She went to the Foundry and said this is
what I want to do, and they were like we dont do old plays. And she was like: this will
be new. And it was. Before Good Person I was in Lears St. Joan of the Stockyards.
B O D Y: I remember that.
Kate Benson: And that Baal at the Flea. Left Baal to go do the Julius Caesar situation.
That was quite a run I was having there. Yeah probably the most new things: Mac.
Two Sibyl Kempsons. I feel like I burn out my relationships after two shows.
B O D Y: Which of Sibyls, Potatoes of August?
Kate Benson: I was in Potatoes in Scott Adkins and Erin Courtneys garden at the
Cho-Chiqq Backyard BBQ Festival, but I didnt do the Dixon Place run. But the first
cast-of-thousands Crime or Emergency with Rich Maxwell and Mike Iveson on the
piano, and a workshop of Krbisgeist, also at Dixon Place the old one.

Kate Benson in The Assemblys HOME/SICK, with Ben Beckley and

Luke Harlan. Photo by Nick Benaceraff.

B O D Y: I think its probably not so much that you do two shows and then burn out
your relationships, I think its more that you do two shows and then someone else says
I have to have you in my show. And then they grab you.
Kate Benson: Well I think thats a better thought.
(laughs)
But I also think from the writing side, I can see how people get attached to actors. But then also casting is much weirder than I thought.
B O D Y: How so.
Kate Benson: You just know when someone is very, very good and wrong. Wrong for the part. Theres nothing personal in it and theres nothing
volitional in it on anybodys part. You can watch there are so many really really good people, but theres a real specific key-in-a-lock kind of
situation and when it happens you know it and then, you know, youll give up a kidney to get that person to take the job. And so I feel like thats
important for I want to see those plays where somebody was careful and smart about casting. I dont want to see those plays where Im looking at
something that was cast because theres a 20 year relationship as much. I mean that stuff is interesting too.

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B O D Y: Thats interesting. There can be so much taken for granted, in the 20 year relationship.
Kate Benson: Yeah theres a lot of juice
B O D Y: Theres a lot of Jews?
Kate Benson: A lot of juice.
(laughs)
B O D Y: I was thinking of Susie Sokol lotta Jews!
Kate Benson: Ok ok theres a lot of energy. Im just gonna get right outta that. Theres a lot of energy in those long relationships and what the
company is doing, and in a way you cant cast outside for that. But or if you do you might make something that doesnt fully cook. But I think people
should sometimes I am disappointed, but I dont think casting is well, I dont think youre good anymore. I hope not!
(laughs)
B O D Y: On that idea of working as an actor who is really into a very collaborative process on developing a new show, and knowing that
playwrights and directors like to work with certain people over and over again, or with certain people if they can, knowing that this person will help
me make this show, will help me navigate very new territory do you find yourself doing that when youre writing?
Kate Benson: Yeah. Sometimes a person lands in my brain while Im writing.
B O D Y: Yourself. You want to cast yourself.
Kate Benson: Sometimes. Always a mistake.
(laughs)
Catastrophe looms.
No sometimes I know what the cast is, or some actor, someone I know gets in there, and then I find myself thinking about how much fun it would be
to make this person do that completely ridiculous action. But most of the time I have no idea what Ive written, and then I know some smart people
and I want to hear them read it out loud. And right now Im very lucky to collaborate with Lee Sunday Evans, who knows how to cast and has a real
good feel for actors. So we just did this table reading of another play and it was cast perfectly in shocking and amazing ways.
B O D Y: What was it, if you dont mind talking about it.
Kate Benson: I can talk about it. It was [Porto]. Kate Scelsa was Porto. Mary Rasmussen was Dry Sack. Theyre friends. Its an attempt at a
traditional romantic comedy with the genders reversed so that the woman is the eccentric exciting mess who does not fit any standard recipe for
sexy girl and yet is an extremely sexy woman. And the guy is kind of a cipher a little bit. Cipher isnt the right word. Hes not precisely the point.
(laughs)
B O D Y: So you guys have had a reading.
Kate Benson: Yeah we just got together around my dining room table and read it out loud.
B O D Y: Ive read a play there its a nice dining room table. Not a lot on the walls, so youve got to focus. Its calming.
Kate Benson: Its got a library feel, but theres always a little bit of bourbon in the room.
B O D Y: No stairs. You just walk right in.
Kate Benson: True. Well theres three little stairs.
B O D Y: But theyre going down.
Kate Benson: They are. You have to go up to get out of my reading. Only up from here! But no, house readings turns out to be really important,
and knowing a lot of really good actors makes it all work.
B O D Y: I need to write myself a note before I forget something.
Kate Benson: (reads)
That says something?
B O D Y: I know what it means, but before I can get to that if you just had a reading of another play, this means that youre on a pretty good pace.
Youre cranking shit out man.
Kate Benson: Yeah. You come out of Brooklyn College with four plays, if you werent having struggles. And I came out with a fifth started, in
tutorial, that is gonna take years, but its getting there. So I think last time I counted there are eight now.
B O D Y: And you finished Macs program when?

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Kate Benson: May. The day that Great Lakes officially opened was my last day of grad school.
B O D Y: Thats great timing.
Kate Benson: It worked out pretty well. I gave a 10-minute speech about brothels and Jean Genet and Proust, and then I ran to seeGreat Lakes.
B O D Y: You gave us that story at rehearsal for Julias show [ Julia Jarchos Nomads]
Kate Benson: Right, because I saw you guys the next day in rehearsal up at Barnard.
B O D Y: Which was yet another new play.
Kate Benson: Thats a playwright I would do a lot to work with over and over and over and over again. That Julia Jarcho.
B O D Y: Its on the record.
Kate Benson: I feel good about that.
B O D Y: Skipping back a couple of points, this note says making people do ridiculous things. And using that as a tactic, or as an inspiration, or
whatever, to write. I feel like, also as an actor, thats the kind of thing where you know what you like to perform. As an actor, you like those kinds of
tasks or challenges, even if its an experiment that might not work out. But I feel like thats an actors point of view, as opposed to other kinds of
writers, who have other ideas
Kate Benson: (laughs)
B O D Y: Lemme rephrase that. Because making people do ridiculous things could mean a lot of different things it could result in some kind of
performance art, it could result in something really conventional. But having read a few of your plays now, I feel like you have a good sense of
whats satisfying for an audience to see.
Kate Benson: Thanks.
B O D Y: I dont want to say theres something easy about that, but theres not a lot of bullshit about it. You know what youre getting into.
Kate Benson: I know what Im getting into or they know?
B O D Y: You know what youre getting into when youre writing this this goes back to how we began this conversation about knowing what you
want. And if you dont know exactly what you want, you definitely know what you dont want. Im just trying to get you to say that you know what
youre doing when you create these kinds of ridiculous situations for actors to be in, because you know that they will be fun to watch.
Kate Benson: Yeah I dont want anyone to be bored, really ever in life. Even though boredom has an important job, Im not into it.
B O D Y: And you know that seems like a pretty obvious thing to do, when youre dealing with live performance, and yet fuck man, people have
other ideas. Theyre like no this show needs to be 10 hours long.
(laughs)
Kate Benson: My number one fear is making something boring, and every time I hear a play for the first time that I have caused, Im sure that its
boring. I just sit there thinking this is boring, this is boring, what I wrote is boring. So you dont choose those kinds of fences, or those kinds of
swamps to get caught in. They just find you. But I think that actors who are willing to be ridiculous are my favorite. I think that actors who want
something noble out of the theater are doing something that I cant find or see or understand. I think that actors who are trying to be attractive are
doing a job I could never do.
(laughs loudly)
So its not that I necessarily love clown, per se, but I like actors who are willing to throw their vanities down on the ground and stomp on them.
B O D Y: If not their dignity.
(laughs)
Kate Benson: Yeah, dignity.
B O D Y: Thats just kind of implied.
Kate Benson: And also I think that audiences dont need help. And I think that its really important to write plays where people get to figure
something out, and where people get to discover some things, and where people get confused, but I dont necessarily also want to completely
obscure whatever it is that made me try to write the thing in the first place. I want them to feel like what the hell was that? That seems like a good
night at the theater.
B O D Y: Thats true. And I think different playwrights have very different ideas about how to get there. And one of the things that I like about your
work is that youre definitely not afraid to embrace something thats pleasurable and that what other people in the avant garde might see as just
conventional or maybe I dont know exactly. Its hard to imagine what other people might imagine about your work, but what Im thinking of is in
the Lee Miller piece, where you set up this scene at one point in the play about how Lee Miller accidentally ended up discovering the process of
solarization in photography, because this mouse ran across her foot on the floor. And then later on in the play, we get a scene from the point of view

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of the mice.
Kate Benson: Well theyre rats.
B O D Y: Right Im sorry you were just talking about the swamps earlier. Swamp rats. I got no problem with that you read that: thats a fun thing
to read. You would want to see that in a show.
_______________________________________________________________________
an excerpt from
LEE MILLER
flashbulb: Untitled (4 Rats)
4 directors chairs: on the back, ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR.
Lee Miller sits in the chair marked ONE, Tanja Ramm in the chair marked TWO, Kiki of Montparnasse in the chair marked THREE, Man Ray in the
chair marked FOUR.
ADR [automated dialogue replacement] again. They sit facing the screen, backs the audience, looping.
1
all the time.
I think about it all the time.
2
yep
3
pretty much
2
all I want to do
1
just get in there
2
oh yeah
1
I mean
2
yeah
just right in
1
it feels so good!
3
pretty much
1
you think: you cant
you wont fit
you think:
2
no way!
1
no way this could work.
3
pretty much
1
but then
2
then!
1
press the nose against it

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2
yes
1
feel it start to give
2
shut your eyes
1
you shut your eyes?
2
oh yeah
1
I dont shut my eyes
2
of course you do
1
never
I never shut my eyes
2
it only works if
you shut your eyes
1
incorrect
everything looks all
smeary
its great
2
eyes open!
3
pretty much
1
open all the way
2
whoa
_______________________________________________________________________
B O D Y: Because in the course of that play, you dont see it coming. Even on the page, the play is set up as a thing to make you think. Its following
a womans life, a real historical person, in the larger context of other real people, and then all of a sudden here are these rats. Its almost a
vaudeville thing, but its great. I dont know other people who are writing that. Who are writing rat plays.
Kate Benson: Well there might be a rat, or a mouse, in every play. That might be one of the swamps you cant escape. That might be true. Are
there rats in Great Lakes? There are no rats in Great Lakes. There are rabbits in [Porto].
B O D Y: But I also like how different your plays are.Im very curious to read the [Porto] play. Because if I read your works, Im not sure that Id be
able to identify oh this is a Kate Benson play.
Kate Benson: Oh youd I dont know
B O D Y: Its not like youre trying to work out the same issue over and over again.
Kate Benson: A little. But no. I think there are a couple of constant goals, though, and one is to make a theater that looks like the streets that I live
on. More than like the boardrooms that exist in this city. Which sounds like its about class, and I dont necessarily
B O D Y: Like modes of life?
Kate Benson: Yeah there are some pet projects that keep coming up, like rats. I think the street is more exciting than the living room. And I think
that any space you can make thats like a street is going to be more full of surprise, unpredictability, surprising people in charge, surprising
disasters, surprising moments of beauty in a way that, in a living room, we know living rooms real good from television, film, life. Theyre
matching. Theyre about matching. Does the painting match the sofa. And if you just go for a walk, you have no control over what you may or may

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not see. And so I want plays that do that. I dont know if I can make them that way, because I have a kind of mathematical brain, so I keep making
patterns even if I try not to. So Im not sure my plays are so chaotic. I have not achieved Radiohole.
(laughs)
But I think surprise is important.
B O D Y: And I think its a different thing to have patterns that just keep repeating and to have patterns that change. Because the pattern can
change.
Kate Benson: Yeah. I hope when I get better at this, I get smarter about how to surprisingly break the pattern.Great Lakes has an ending that is
not necessarily perceived in the first 10 lines
B O D Y: No not at all.
Kate Benson: And Im pretty happy about that. That took a lot of work on the collaboration front to make that happen.
B O D Y: A big chunk of that play is a self-contained kind of unit, and then, just when you think its going to close, it blows open.
Kate Benson: I also think that women should be front and center. But I think men are pretty interesting too, so I find myself constantly trying to
navigate that balance.
B O D Y: Also if youre on a street, its easier to do that theres not as many expectations or conventions about whats supposed to happen.
Kate Benson: Its a freer space, absolutely. I think plays that happen outside in the world are exciting. Even though Great Lakes is in a very
claustrophobic place in a way. The Annie Baker play The Aliens happens out back behind the store its so much more exciting that it happens
outside the store than inside the store. Because we know what inside of the store is. But under the sky is a real good place for the theater I think.
____________________________________________________________________
Read and excerpt of GREAT LAKES by KATE BENSON here.
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KATE BENSON is a writer and actor living in Brooklyn. Her plays include A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great
Lakes, produced by New Georges in 2014, [PORTO], Lee Miller, and Radium Now. She is a member of the Jam at New Georges and the 2014-15
Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, and she is a graduate of the Brooklyn College MFA Playwriting program. Kate is the recipient of the Clubbed Thumb
Biennial Commission and has had readings and showings of her work at Dixon Place, 13th St. Theater, Jimmys No. 43, and the Room at New
Georges. As an actor, she has appeared at the Public, NYTW, the Flea, PS 122, the Incubator, and LaMama.

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