Photo courtesy of Paul Downs Colaizzo
On Tuesday, Signature Theatre debuted “Pride in the Falls of Autrey Mill,” an original drama by Paul Downs Colaizzo, the writer of the critically-acclaimed off-Broadway hit “Really Really.” We spoke with Colaizzo to discuss his recent success, how audiences still surprise him and what inspired his newest and “favorite” production to date.
We’re almost two years out from the debut of “Really Really” at Signature. How have things changed for you as a writer since the play’s popularity and positive critical reception?
It’s changed a lot. My life is very full of writing projects. I live in LA now, working for an HBO show that I’m developing…I get e-mails every day from people who either want to talk to me about “Really Really,” how it affected them or asking for information on how they can see it again…just telling me what it’s done for them as a young theater artist, which is so incredible. And it’s great that they’re doing another show for me because I loved being here and it was an amazing opportunity and it changed my life. And I love this area. It’s great to go to LA and it’s great to be in New York and working on stuff too, but I did get this weird feeling when I came back to Shirlington where I could take off my shoes and just kind of make art.
That play was part of a trilogy. When can we expect to see the next two in the series?
They have their first draft done, and in some cases their second or third. I e-mailed [Eric Schaeffer] and said, this is my favorite play of mine, ‘Pride in the Falls of Autrey Mill,’ and he read it and responded, let’s do it. I hope that those other two plays see the light somewhere at some point.
What makes ‘Pride in the Falls’ your favorite?
I think the f*cked-up-edness of it with the universality of it. That sort of pairing is what I was striving for in writing it and what makes it most exciting for me. I worked to make the characters and the situations singular but at the same time what resulted was something that a lot of people from all over the country could relate to, at least that was the goal.
I can’t help but draw a comparison between your setting of the Falls of Autrey Mill and some of the well-to-do neighborhoods in Northern Virginia. Is it a nod to any real neighborhood?
There’s a neighborhood called The Falls of Autry Mill and it’s in Alpharetta, Georgia. I went to high school in Alpharetta, Georgia and the neighborhood next door to mine was the Falls of Autry Mill, and I just always thought it sounded like a woman falling down. It was these beautiful houses and I thought, what an unfortunate feeling to get, for me, to get when you drive by there—this tragic image of some woman falling. I mean, I didn’t know that Autry was a French word, I was young, but that was sort of something that stuck with me and was one of the jumping off points.
Thematically, “Really Really” and “Pride in the Falls of Autrey Mill” both seem to share brutally honest characters and façade-shattering conflicts, but in what ways do these two plays differ?
“Really Really” was a project designed to get younger audiences in the theater. That was my intention with that play. Audiences my age. It was a show that felt like it was developed for and speaking to a specific group of people. The fact that it had a wider appeal was a bonus, and not the intention. “Pride in the Falls,” I wanted to write a family drama, and that’s what the play is. Sometimes I feel like “Pride in the Falls” is the “Really Really” for the baby boomer generation, the way that I would do it, but they’re very different plays.
“Pride in the Falls” debuted at Signature on Tuesday. How did opening night go?
It went very well, and we’re still making changes. The most amazing thing was to watch this audience, who is an original theater audience, who is middle aged, sometimes older, know this woman, the lead woman of the show, the character [Carly, played by Christine Lahti]. And you can get from their reactions that they have been there, or they know someone who’s been there, and they were invested in things that I really didn’t expect them to be invested in. There were audible reactions at plot points I wasn’t convinced would be worth that. So it was very informative and exciting and we’re still making it the show that we want it to be.
Are you often surprised by how audiences react to the plays you’ve written?
Yeah, there were surprising reactions to “Really Really” for sure, so I guess yes, because I’m surprised by some of the reactions in this as well, which is a good thing, because it’s like now I’m learning. I’m writing these things and they’re causing me to learn more about society and culture and what we value and what we react to and what’s the drama.
Like many playwrights, you’ve stepped onto the stage before. Any plans to give acting another shot?
No. I studied it in school. I did it for two years out of school. I did three performances of “Really Really” which was hilarious and a once-in-a-lifetime sort of opportunity, but it’s not on the docket.
What was it like to be involved in a performance that you had written. Did you feel more connected to it?
I had to learn the goddamn lines!
Even though you wrote it.
I had been working on it for a solid six years, and I was running lines over and over again in my apartment. It was an interesting experience. It was fun to suddenly be peers with the actors and enjoy that dynamic. One thing about being a writer is, when you’re an actor, every time you perform a new show you get a new family. When you’re the writer, you don’t get that sense of brotherhood with everybody else, even though you’re in the room and even though you’ve created the world that everyone’s inhabiting, it’s still very isolating. For those three performances, it was fun to be one of the kids at the party again.
So, what’s next for you? You mentioned work with HBO and a pilot with ABC.
The show [called "Open"] that I’m on the staff of at HBO is a new Ryan Murphy show—he’s the creator of Glee, American Horror Story and Nip Tuck—and it’s about open marriage. I’m working on that now, and if it gets picked up as a series, we’d start production in April or May. It promises to be groundbreaking and fascinating and really explore sex in 2014 in a very open and bold way. And then “Just Rewards,” is the show in development at ABC, which is my creation. It’s supposed to be very fun and clumsy but sleek. It’s about a woman who discovers that her husband’s cheating on her and follows her son to his freshman year of college. She can’t get a job because she opted out in order to have a family and she discovers that she’s in the same boat as her millennial neighbors, because she’s in a one room apartment and can’t make money. They have to team up to figure out how to survive. It’s a fun take on a procedural drama. And then I’m going to keep working on more plays, because that’s where you get to do what you want to do no matter what.
Buy tickets for “Pride in the Falls of Autrey Mill,” which runs through Dec. 8.