An Interview With
Michael Puzzo
The Dirty Talk

Your play, The Dirty Talk, puts its characters right into the classic Two-Guys-Trapped-In-A-Room scenario. Can you tell us a little bit about the play, and where your idea for it came from?

The play was literally conceived when I was trapped in a room. Well, ok, trapped is a little bit severe...I was more stuck than trapped....but either way I wasn’t goin’ anywhere anytime soon.

It was the summer of 2000 and I had just pounded the final nail into the coffin of a doomed five-year relationship. My personal life which always seemed to be my bedrock now resembled my artistic life; a murky fucking mess. If all this sounds a tad melodramatic forgive me, but it was the sheer severity of my self pity that finally lead me to have the balls to put pen to paper and write my first play: The Dirty Talk.

I’m an actor who always had a not-so-secret hankering to try playwriting. My friend and fellow LAByrinth company member Stephen Adly Guirgis seemed to sense some sorta potential in me, so he was always challenging me to give writing a whirl. But the idea of anything “by Michael Puzzo” scared the shit outta me.

Every summer for the past ten years or so, LAByrinth has its summer intensive. What that usually entails is a bunch of us hopping in a van and heading up to some remote, very un-NYC type locale to do readings of new plays for two weeks. This is how the company chooses its upcoming season. I usually end up getting about seven hours sleep for the whole two weeks and get a terrible cold as soon as we return to the city. I look forward to those sniffles like Christmas. It is always without a doubt the highlight of every year, an artistic utopia that refills my tank for the dreary year ahead.

In 2000, I needed the intensive like a heart transplant. We were up in Tannersville, NY at a place called Horton-By-The-Stream; which sorta’ looked like the town on that show Little House on the Prairie. There were bears, a million stars at night and as you might imagine by the name, a stream. We did our readings in a barn, with not a taxi or bodega in sight, just a bunch of my closest friends, tryin’ to figure out how to make something beautiful. We were rehearsing than reading something like three plays a night, so I was looking forward to my one day off. I was gonna go for a hike down by a waterfall or something out door-sey like that. This was a very un-Puzzo like thing to do, but not only was I game, I needed it. Anyway, it rained like holy hell and I ended up stuck in the main house with a few others, just staring at the belching potbelly stove. And so I figured if I didn’t at least try and write something, here in the most nurturing and safe artistic environment that I could imagine, I was probably never gonna write at all. So I wrote The Dirty Talk.

John Ortiz, one of our artistic directors, got wind that I was writing something and told me that he had scheduled a reading of the play later in the week. Which forced me to finish the thing. At the time I had no idea what the play was about and despite the fact that I did not wanna write some bullshit cathartic piece about my break up, I ended up adding elements to the script, just so I could finish the damn thing.

Wow, what a long-ass answer to a simple question. That answer may actually be longer than the play itself.

The play's leading men, actors Kevin Cristaldi and Sidney Williams, were an effective on-stage duo. Did you write the play specifically for them, or were they found and cast through the traditional means of auditions?

Kevin and Sid were just a kinda happy accident.

The play was first read and work-shopped with David Zayas as Mitch and Stephen Guirgis as Lino. They agreed to be in the reading up in Tannersville when I was about half way through writing it. So I wrote with those guys in mind as I was finishing it. And it turned out pretty well. When it came time to do the play in this past Fringe, both Stephen and David were gonna be in it, but had to pull out for some reason or another. Both those guys are mad busy and I was just happy that after five years they still were down to do it. So my director Padraic Lillis and I had to sorta’ scramble to re-cast. Kevin was a friend of Padraic’s and he had directed him before. Sid had been in my friend Bob Glaudini’s play Identical Same Temptation the year before and although I did not see his performance, I heard he was great. So we just cast those two guys, sight unseen. As an actor I fucking hate auditions so we passed them up entirely. I just trusted the opinions of my friends and took a huge leap of faith. It ended up being the best thing for the play. When I think about it now though, it’s kinda scary. We coulda been screwed. But Thank God fer’ Sid and Kevin!

The Dirty Talk was a critical and popular hit at the 2005 New York International Fringe Festival. How was the whole Fringe experience for you?

I acted in the play When Words Fail... in the 1998 Fringe, back when the festival was pretty much just on the LES and that was a great experience. I think I saw something like twenty-five shows. It really felt like a little theater town, all of us seeing each other shows, drinking in the same bars, it felt like we were really part of something. Now maybe it’s just because I was consumed with my own shit this time around, but I did not get to see anything at all, and didn’t really meet anybody else from any of the other shows, which kinda sucks. But I was thankful for the opportunity and would do it again in a heartbeat.

You're an actor who branched out into writing, and now you do both. For you, at least, does one inform the other?

They are in the way the same thing. Writing uses the same muscles, the same parts of your heart and brain as acting. Folks just seem to be more impressed when you write something down, than when you craft a character. Which is a bit of a shame. I am a much better actor now that I have started writing. And vice versa. The two feed each other. And in my case need each other. It’s actually quite mysterious and wonderful. I feel blessed that I finally had courage enough to just say “fuck it” and start writing stuff down. Every actor should at least try it twice.

Are there any particular writers you like or who influence your work?

I would say books and music are my major influence. If I could ever figure out a way to distill my appreciation and understanding of Knut Hamsun, Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Waits, Joey Ramone and The Amazing Spiderman, into a piece of theater, I’d die a happy man.

My favorite playwright though, is definitely John Patrick Shanley.

You're a member of LAByrinth Theater Company. How did you first become involved with them? And what's your experience with them been like so far?

When the LAB was in it’s second year, my roommate at the time, my dear friend Liz Canavan auditioned to be a company member, through Backstage. I don’t think she knew what the hell it was all about, but being new to the city, we were both hungry for something, anything. So she joined the LAB and I, like pretty much every actor who ever got off the bus at Port Authority, did a million little Way-the-Hell Off -Off Broadway shows. Once in awhile I would go check out the early LAB shows and sometimes go to the occasional party. At the beginning the shows were nothing special, but the parties were off the hook.

In the mid-nineties after I finished two years of Meisner training with Maggie Flannigan. Liz got me an audition. And I got in. I will point out that, 1997 the year I joined the LAB was the last year they had formal auditions for company. I have always secretly feared it was cuz they wanted to make sure that no one like me ever snuck in under the wire again.

I’ll be honest. If it wasn’t for the LAB, I would have given up acting a long time ago. And I sure as shit would have never become a playwright. To have the courage to be an artist here in the twenty first century would have been almost impossible if not for the fact that as a member of the LAB, I was no longer alone.

You've had several theatre-related mentors over the years who've had a big impact on you. Could you tell us a little bit about them, and how they contributed to your artistic development?

My high school drama teacher Marylin Reich was my first and probably most important influence. She was the first person who didn‘t look at me like I was retarded, when I said I wanted to be an actor. And sometimes thas’ all it takes. I fell in love for the first time in her class, first with performing and then with plays. She had this voluminous and comprehensive library of what seemed like every play Samuel French ever published. And I read them all. She kept them in a massive oak cabinet under lock and key, like they were jewels. And they were. I actually wrote my first play as a sophomore in her class—The Game Show Murders, which was a film noir spoof written by a 14 year old who had never seen any film noir, only other film noir spoofs. I played the lead and we performed one night only. One night, may have been one night too many. But Marylin believed in me and I thank her.

Maggie Flannigan my acting teacher, set the bar high as an actor and as a human. Her fierce integrity is still a touchstone in almost everything I try and do.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, the co-artistic director of LAByrinth, is a constant inspiration for how hard he works, how deep he feels and just how much he fucking cares about actors and the art of acting.

John Ortiz is the straw that stirs the drink.

Stephen Guirgis besides being an incredible talent is a great and valued friend.

And then there is Shanley.

When we read The Dirty Talk for the first time at the 2000 Summer Intensive, Shanley much to my white knuckled terror sat right in front of me. I had met him a few days before during a volley ball game and tried to play it off like it was no big deal. It was. When the very first reading of my very first play was over the very first person to congratulate me was John Patrick Shanley. Since then we have become close friends. When I step off a stage after a performance and John says to me “Michael you’re a good actor!” I sometimes feel like I am high on crack. Shanley’s advice on anything I write is invaluable. But his advice on how to deal with the day-to-day heartache’s that life brings is essential. I love the guy.

By your own admission, you were "sort of the Orson Welles of kiddie puppet shows" when you were a kid. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Ah, Jeez. I kinda wish I never said that. Out of context the question in itself is kinda funny and strange, though. maybe if I refuse to answer, it will just add some sorta’ much needed mystique.

What are you currently working on?

It looks like The Dirty Talk is gonna be remounted sometime in the fall. Which is exciting. I also have about a half a dozen plays that I have written since then just sitting on my lawn in various stages of disrepair. And I think 2006 is gonna be all about taking them down off the cinder blocks and getting em’ up and running. And I would also like to add that I am currently available for acting work. And for the right price I might be even tempted to put on a puppet show for your kids.

Interview with Michael Puzzo was conducted by Michael Criscuolo February 2006.

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