GETTING TO KNOW YOU: Philip Dawkins
Artist Interviewed
Philip Edward Dawkins
Libation Imbibed
Coffee coffee coffee
Location
Emjoy's dining room, next to her very loud puppy
America's sweetheart and Chicago playwright, Philip Dawkins came over for coffee, tater tot casserole and chit chat about his career and life.
Have you done a lot of podcasts?
I don't think so.
Really? We haven't either.
Perfect. Love it.
So we'd love to know a bit about your history, how you got here, what you do in theater?
So what I do in theater is I'm a playwright which I enjoy and I also teach playwriting and I'll kind of do whatever. I come from Arizona, I grew up in Phoenix and got out of there as fast as I can. It was just to sunny and pleasant. I needed to be somewhere...
With terrible winters?
It wasn't enough of a challenge. It was too easy.
Did you come here for college?
I went to Loyola University here in Chicago but I was really only looking for colleges in Chicago. I pretty much knew I wanted to come here and when I found Loyola I was like, "Ah yes, this is great!" And I bought a coat for the first time.
Because you have vests, but not coats in Arizona.
...Where do you put your gun?
So. That was 18 years ago and I've been here ever since. IT's an awesome place to be - writing, creating, there's cool community here, both inside and outside the theater community I think there's just lots of opportunity. If you're bored in Chicago, it's your fault. Plenty to do on a budget or free. It's an inspiring place to be.
What do you do on a budget or for free in Chicago?
Apparently I do podcasts.
True - you did not pay us to do this. We paid you in coffee.
I'm a cyclist and this is a great city to cycle in because it's so flat. So I do a lot of that. There's a lot of wonderful bike trails.
Do you get play ideas while you're biking to all these places?
Almost exclusively. I cannot think about play writing unless I'm on my bike. I do a lot of writing while riding. I'll do it out loud, I'll record it, call myself to an answering machine or turn my recorder on and put it in my chest pocket. Because you can kind of only concentrate on one thing while you're biking. You have two goals when you're on your bike. One is "don't die" and then you can think of one other thing, so it sort of gets rid of all the other distractions. I can't be thinking about laundry, I can only be thinking "don't die" and one other thing.
What things do you do with your feet? Do you tap?
I do kung fu. I found it as an adult -- I was feeling kind of stagnant.. I started cycling and kung fu kind of around the same time, 2005-2006, just wandered into a kung fu school close to my neighborhood called Rising Phoenix Kung Fu and the people who run it have become really important people to me in my life. I don't remember deciding to do it, they were just like "come back Monday!" just like "YOU GOT THE PART! YOU'RE ON!" And it's great. I haven't done it in a little while because of injury but I really miss it. Yesterday, the Steppenwolf Young Adult Council asked me to lead a playwriting workshop with them and I'm like I'm gonna do my Kung Fu Playwriting thing with them, is that cool? It's where we get up on our feet and show a couple kicks and blocks and stuff and then I tell them what it has to do with playwriting and they're like "I don't get it." And that's alright. But it was great to just do it again, and I just miss this...It's always in there and as a student of Kung Fu, I approach things learning things differently and discovering things differently.
How so?
Well, you're from Seattle, right? Every time I go to Seattle, I go visit Bruce Lee's grave - go see Bruce and Brandon - and I find him incredibly inspiring - he did a lot of writing as well. When he was injured, he had a terrible back injury, he said "my training can't end just because I fell," so he just wrote. He wrote down all his theories, about being an actor, a martial artist, an artist in general. His whole approach to martial arts, being that there's not just one school that's better than others. "Go with this flow, don't be so stuck on this one school of thought or one style." Whatever it is, whether you're talking about the arts or martial arts, go to the place where the art wants to take you.
That's beautiful.
Yeah, and I'm a Virgo, so I'm very much into this style or this thing.
Me tooo!
Yeah, so you know! We love our tupperware.
Is that a Virgo thing?
We love cabinets and tupperware. But this more like just have a drawer full of water, and what you do with that...specifically Shaolin Kung Fu.
I actually saw the show, Kung Fu, in New York.
So did I! I'm the one who loved it! I saw it opening night!
What did you love about it?
I loved so much about it. But also if you are a fan/worshipper of Bruce Lee, there were a lot of easter eggs in there. It wasn't show for a Western audience. And I'm not saying I'm not a western
audience, I am. It just happens to be this happens to be the one thing that I'm really into. There were things in there that were really poignant and very dramatic that he didn't explain. His job wasn't "and now I'm going to break down to you what this means..." I think for a different audience, it's there. Just, OH! SEE WHAT HE DID THERE?
Have you always been a writer?
I guess I've always been a writer. I was an only child for a long time, so just had to script my own playtime. I would write down the saga of my Trolls and G.I. Joes so I could remember them and it just became like a long soap opera.
Would it be in script form?
Yeah, on yellow legal pads. There was a Trolls: The Musical.
Do you still have it? Can we perform it? How do we find it? Can Nate be the yellow one?
The yellow one's name was...she was the mom character. You've got her assets.
Do you think you can recreate Trolls: The Musical from memory?
I'm sure, yeah. Trolls were great because they're not people, they're not any race, they're just these creatures, like Smurfs. And for me, they weren't technically "dolls" so I was allowed to play with them. And that was so great for me because there was only - what? Like three girl G.I. Joe's? And their faces are covered up, except the Baroness, and she's hard to find!
And eBay wasn't a thing back then.
No! Oh and Trolls were also genderless. I had gender non-conforming trolls. There was one troll named Noelle. She was a Christmas troll, she had plastic elf feet that were red and green and white and came to a point and those didn't come off. I dropped that troll in the bathtub and the hair came out, like "Oh, crud." I got Christmas tinsel and made a wig out of long flowy silver Christmas tinsel and stuck it into her scull so she had long Heidi Klum Christmas tinsel hair and his name had been Noelle and I kept it Noelle but in the saga Noelle had died by drowning and then a spirit of Christmas inhabited Noelle but the spirit was a girl and it was a female presenting in this male troll boy. Also she could fly.
How old were you when you were writing that?
Maybe 10 or 11. My favorite age to teach is junior high because you still have all of that wonderful awesome nerdy geekiness that when we get into high school we shut off. You still get scripts from kids in junior high that are about vampire unicorns and stuff which is amazing! And then something happens when you become a freshman and you become scared of everything, "I'm scared of myself, I have to apologize for myself" and then you just get boring [stories]...you have to fight through that layer as a teacher to get to - No, what are you really wanting to write? It's still there!
Did that happen to you?
I think the opposite maybe because I sort of fell into theater, I was a child actor so I found theater around that time. I was surrounded by a bunch of real genuine weirdos who were like, "Vampire unicorn?! Yaaasss!" They were just like "so tell me more about this Spirit of Christmas Troll." So I think that helped a little bit. And then I didn't think of school where I did creative things. I had a very compartmentalized tupperware life.
Were you a good student?
Excellent student. But - let's bring it down you guys - everything was all about "don't get found out as being gay." Do everything you can to [be perfect] to run interference. I was also doing all this theater which was a big give away so I had to a lot of stuff...I was the student chaplin at our Christian school, I did everything I could possibly do. So I wasn't a good student necessarily because i was smart, I just had to be good so that there was no reason to call me into any sort of reprimand. Anything to stay out of the principal's office or be questioned.
When did you come out?
Like the minute I left. I graduated when I was 17 and that summer after freshman year, I stayed in Chicago with some friends, called my parents, like "Guess what?!" It was a phone call, which is always a nice thing to do your parents, right? "I'm going through a tunnel!"
Loyola is Jesuit but it's liberal and arty and wasn't going to be a scary place to [come out] at...
And it wasn't. It was scary for all the reasons that it's scary but actually being in that environment and the teachers and community and faculty there were just so accepting and wonderful. It was a good place. Good, safe, creative, fun space. And now I teach there sometimes. Which is very full circle. I teach alongside the people who taught me! And who were so good to me. And I look and I see the direct lineage of the students now - I know which student you are...And of course everyone is multifaceted but there are these segments, types of students, like "I'm less worried about you than you are about you, I know your future to a certain extent. It's like a boggle box, you shake everything out and everything falls into its little spot. And I can say if you're having this question, whether it's a big life question or artistic question, go talk to this teacher, because I guarantee you they know - they helped me. Walk down the hall and talk to this person. I promise. It's nice to have a really first hand working understanding of people in the department.
Were you taking acting? Playwriting? Or was it just a general theater major?
It was a theater major. To my knowledge I was the only student at that time interested in playwriting. And I kind of had to ask about it, like, "soooo...writing?" "Yeah...about that." They helped a lot. Their playwriting teacher had just retired - Nick Patricca, Victory Gardens Theater playwright at the time, he's a mentor and friend - basically they were like "Heyyy, so glad you retired - wanna come back for one student and just work with him?" And luckily he did, so I had four years of just working with Nick who just taught me everything. I mean I basically knew nothing other than from my experience as an actor and he challenged and pushed me and he's still one of the first people to look at anything I have. Wonderful playwright, wonderful guy, he just kind of made that experience for me.
What a great resource for them to provide you with.
I think I took a class he taught...it might have been screenwriting? But I think that's fine...I actually don't think there's anything wrong with that- you can't take a class that's not a playwriting class. Every class, especially if it's a theater class - if it's a lighting design class...And acting is just playwriting in reverse. If you understand acting, then you know what you're looking for in a script, you know what you need, you know what tidbits need to be provided in order for you to build a character so then if you wanna be a playwright, then just reverse that -- what do I need to provide for this actor? What do I need to provide for this director? What is this dramaturg looking for? You know you'll understand, just flip the page over and do it from the other end.
You make it sound so easy!
I think it's less complicated...It's a craft. There's a reason why "playwright" is spelled 'WRIGHT' it is a craft, it is a skill. I think lots of people disagree with me on this. But I feel in my experience that anyone can be taught to write a play. It is a skill and it can be difficult, but in the same way that "I don't know how to build a house." But if somebody dedicated a lot of time to sitting me down and teaching me how to do it, I feel confident I could build a house. I could totally get there. It is learnable. I feel that way about playwriting. If you nurture the tools...anyone can do it.
Acting? I think you can get better, but either you're watchable or you're not. Either you a person who has a charisma that people want to watch - and I don't equate this with beauty - it's watchableness and you can't teach it. But those people who do all that work as an actor and they're just not watchable, I'm like, "Come to me!"
Trolls 2: The Musical!
Yes! Walk into my web, you brilliant unwatchable thing!
When was the switch to just playwrighting, no more acting?
My senior year in Loyola, they actually produced one of my plays, which was awesome. It was called "Not Even the Children", an adaptation of a short Truman Capote story from his story called "One Christmas." The chair of the department at the time (who's now the dean of performing arts at Loyola) directed it. And it was just a wonderful, scary, awesome beautiful experience. I can't believe they produced a student play on their main stage. To my knowledge they haven't done it since, which is probably a lot of my fault. But it was awesome and so hard. It was harder than I ever worked as an actor and I came out of it feeling I knew less than when I started. Every time you open up one door, it opens up seven others and so right after college I got into this writers residency that required me to just write every day in silence, you couldn't speak to anyone else. So then I was like "Let's see if I can do this, if I can sustain that interest," and not only could I sustain that interest, I wanted more of that. And I came home and I broke up with my theatrical agent and quit. And there are tons of people who do both - acting and writing and do great, and I realize I'm not one of them, I need to dedicate all of my time to the writing. So never say never. If someone comes up to me and says "We really need you to be Mrs. Lovett!" ALRIGHT I'LL DO IT. I'm just putting it out there. I'm just gonna Secret that into the universe...I could go on tomorrow.
What's the hustle like as a playwright, compared to being an actor?
Look at the last show you did, see how many actors there were on it...there was one playwright, probably. Usually there is one playwright. So there are fewer opportunities, but those opportunities (in theory) are more open. Look at a theater's season, how many of those plays (unless it's dedicated to new work), maybe one play will be one new play. It's important to look at the math before you go into it and go like "Okay. How hard do I wanna work? How long do I wanna wait?" That's a tough real thing.
How long did you wait? Did you have to start from scratch once you graduated?
I did have to start from scratch, but I also had people reaching out to give me opportunities. It's one step forward, two steps back. A lot of it is finding the people who you want to work with, people who inspire you and then telling them, "Hey, I wanna work with you, how can we make that happen?" And not worrying about with what institution or under what banner. Just - "You inspire me as an artist" - whether that's a costume designer or an actor - "When do we get to do something together?" If it's at Mom and Pop's Ye Olde Community Theatre, great, at least you're getting to work with that person. This person inspires me so we are going to do this work together
That's a beautiful way of thinking about how to find work - who do I want to collaborate with?
Find the people - yeah. Because I think we're told, go after the theaters, but institution's have stacks as high as the ceiling of people who will say "You should do my play!" And maybe there's just two people at that theater who are exciting to you and the rest is just a name. But look at the theater that you're excited by, go see productions there, and then - what's the common thread that's most exciting to you? Is it the costumes? Is it that one actor in their ensemble who always blows you away? Is it this one director? Then contact that person. Because that person maybe has five scripts that people have sent them. If they're a costume designer, maybe there's no scripts. But if you keep noticing their work, you find a way to meet.
When we met, you were a teaching artist and writing plays for youth for Northlight Theater, right? And your play, The Homosexuals, hadn't happened yet but it was about to...?
Yes. I was mostly writing for youth - which I do a lot and I really enjoy that. When I write for youth it's usually for youth to perform, for young performers (summer camps, church groups, theater camps) where you need 70 roles, most of them girls, all of them with between 1-25 lines. And I like that challenge. It's fun to do.
Wasn't there some play about two surf dude whales? What was that one?
Oh, sea lions. My slacker sea lions story - Biff and Otis. Biff and Otis are real sea lions. I met them, I interviewed them. They're at The Shedd. This was a commission from Northlight -- Devon DeMayo at the time was their youth director and sent me this article from the paper and was like "I think we have our next story." And theywere these sea lions off the coast of Oregon - California sea lions. A natural thing that sea lions do is to go out on a sea forage once a year at a certain time when the fish are out and they basically just eat everything. It's part of population control, but it's a very natural thing and then they come back and sleep for a month.
That sounds like me! That's my spring break!
Basically, they spring break. Then for whatever reason these two sea lions did not go with the pack, instead they walked on foot, 200 miles inland to a salmon farm, jumped in the salmon baths and ate every single fish. They made themselves very sick and they also bankrupted this farmer. So they tagged them because they were in no way an endangered species, so you can actually put sea lions down. So they dropped them back in the ocean and then a month later they were back and did it again. So the state of Oregon was going to exterminate them but before they did they put out a call to different aquariums and said "does anyone want these - no joke - clinically obese sea lions?" And the Shedd did.
Who will buy? The Shedd will buy!
Guys, they were the size of a Chevy Tahoe. They were so big. They actually do a lot of taking animals that are undesirable for other places and these guys were morbidly obese and they're tattooed, so they have tattoos on their neck like 24601 and they took them and they named them. So we wrote a play about these slacker sea lions. It was basically about being so lazy, they end up doing more work and then eventually being rewarded for it. What a great thing to do with junior highers, right? The power of being lazy and getting rewarded.
Do you get a lot of inspiration from real stories?
I'd say about half and half. I would say Charm was the first play I wrote about people who are living, who I see on a daily basis - I just talked to Mama just yesterday - she inspired that play. So that was nerve-wracking. There's a higher bar of responsibility when you're writing for people that you know you're going to have lunch with on Thursday.
So did that process go? Did you do a lot of interviews?
I did a lot of interviews and hanging out with her and then...So Charm is about -- there's a woman named Gloria Allen in Chicago who volunteers to teach etiquette class at the Center at Halsted for trans youth in Chicago. It's open to anybody, but the class itself is for trans youth and she herself is trans. And so I attended the class for six months with full transparency. Everybody knew who I was, that I was writing this, and that the would let me know if there's something in class that they wouldn't want me to share. And I reminded everybody of that frequently. It's nerve-wracking though, I gotta get this right because this isn't just a historical person, this is someone I know and care about. I said to Gloria one day, "What do you think - because I'm a cis-gendered white male and she's a woman of a certain age, she's African American and she's trans - what do you think about me writing your voice?" She said "Oh, I don't care, just make me sound fabulous." Except that didn't relieve any pressure for me - oh JUST make you sound fabulous? Great. I'll just do that. Although she is naturally fabulous so I just had to sound like her as much as possible. So she did a lot to try to relieve pressure, at the same was still like "Get it right."
She came to the show a lot, right?
She was very physically present. And Dexter, the actor playing her, had to do a lot of direct address and just look out and see her in the audience...He said he took a lot of power from her watching because she's such a giver, she's so generous, she's there to see other people succeed and she was very much cheering him on. So she paved a great way for him to start the show, see her and say "There's Gloria. She's got me. I can give this to her." More of a circle of energy, rather than OH CRAP BETTER GET THIS RIGHT.
The casting of Charm - how tough was it? What did you go through to get that beautiful ensemble of people? What conversations took place?
That was tough. There were lots of conversations. Northlight Theatre commissioned Charm and produced it and Lynn Baber is their casting director who spent a good part of two years actively searching across the country, even outside the country for it. Because it's a nine character cast, 6 of those characters are trans or gender non-conforming or gender variant, so that's a big thing. And there are two characters who can't be white. They're all based on specific people. Finding that was rough. It was very damning of theater history in the United States. The character inspired by Mama is 67, African American trans woman. And we could not find that woman who was an actor who could carry the show. Of course we could find those women, but someone who is an actor. And younger people, we found. Or, the positive part - we found younger actors, but they were booked. So cool, they're working. And I gave those peoples' names to the next production that was doing it. I've started making a list of people. And so I think it says a lot about where we've come from and that space was not made for that person earlier when that person was young they got out of the game.
They didn't know they were wanted?
Or were told "there's no place for you." If you're 25 and you're an actor and somebody says to you "You will never play Lady Macbeth" then what are you doing? Get out of the game. What's the point? I'm never gonna be...I'll just quit. It could be for any number of reasons, could be race, disability, gender expression, whenever you show up and you give your truth to the world and they're like "I disagree with your truth," get out of that game.
Just in the year and a half since we were casting, there has been so much progress just in the world, just in terms of there being an entire casting agency in New York for trans actors...it's moving so fast, like the change is happening and it's exciting.
And it's happening because opportunities like Charm and Transparent...people are being told that they're wanted.
For Mixed Blood's upcoming production of Charm, last time I spoke to them, they still weren't able to find an African American in her 70s to play the lead which I think that that's...Yes, you make space but it's a generational thing. That person probably went into something else. Or let's be real - we lived through the 80s, we lived through a lot of violence...they're probably not alive. You know? So, I think Mama Gloria, the real person is very special to me and I met a lot of people like her, but not really in the theater world. So I think we need to look at who we did not make space for and now we don't have those actors. And if you are this actor and you're listening to this and you're like, "Nobody's called me!" Call me!
Email the show, we'll put you contact with each other...
But yeah, Minnesota has been very good to me. Jungle Theater is doing LeSwitch and then I have a play coming up with the Children's Theater.
What else is coming up for you?
Yeah I'm writing some new plays. I'm writing a play, a commission for Raven Theater here in Chicago, I'm writing something for Sideshow Theater, we'll see what happens with that. I'm always wasting time in some way.
But with other people!
Exactly.
Would you tell us about Donald Gross?
Nope.
I want to hear it from you and Nate has no idea what we're talking about...
Donald Gross - I had to think about...ooh, do I know this person? - So when I was a child actor, child acting, I was an episode of Party of Five...
Called...?
FALSIES. It's the second episode of the second season. And I play a kid named Donald Gross who tried to hit on Lacey Chabert's character, Claudia, as it was the first day of junior high and she had bought a padded bra because she felt insecure and it was all about that.
You were a boob dude.
Donald Gross was a boob dude. And he was also, he didn't really respect boundaries. He just didn't have a large personal space bubble. Kind of didn't pick up on social cues, also was just twelve. So. A lot was happening with Donald Gross. And poor Claudia and she goes in the bathroom and takes the bra off.
Where do you think Donald Gross is today? What's he doing?
He's in the tech industry. He works in Silicon Valley. He created an app, it times, it lets you know when it's time to pump. Right? And he's living comfortably. There's always that moment when I'm teaching and that student comes up to me and says, "I found your actor reel."
Here's the thing about Philip Dawkins - he's a good actor!
But it was fun. And I loved doing that I really loved it. I had parents who were happy to support whatever I wanted to do. If I wanted to do t-ball it was all in, if I wanted to do acting...They knew nothing about theater, but I sought that out and then they helped me with it when they saw that that was something I wanted to do.
Oh! I have one great final question: At a buffet, do you have a strategy?
Yes, I do. I have a very specific strategy - it's: Don't eat at the buffet. I used to be like "Pile it all on." But I was once at a buffet where I saw a person do something...that changed my opinion of buffets. So yeah.
So your strategy used to be to pile it on?
Well I'm a Virgo so I don't like my food to touch. Now if it's Mexician food, or Chinese or Indian, it can touch. Because they should smush together. It's all good. But if I'm at the Sizzler, I want everything in a different...I'm also never at the Sizzler. I don't like buffets and I'm a vegetarian. Like Sizzler is the ninth place of hell for me. I do like a cafeteria though because you go through and they do it for you and they're on the other side of the protective shield with bullet proof glass. I will say I have a strategy of what I eat first on my plate.
Which is?
Eat the thing that you don't like eating cold first. So if there's fries and a veggie burger, eat the fries first because cold fries are terrible, but a cold burger, I can deal with that.
Thank you, Philip, for your wisdom.
Eat the thing first that you don't want to eat cold.