EMMA HORWITZ & JULIA IZUMI INTERVIEW EACH OTHER! NG SPRING ’25!
This spring, two big projects: Emma Horwitz & Bailey Willams’ Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods, co-produced with Rattlestick Theatre at HERE in NYC… and Julia Izumi’s Akira Kurosawa Explains His Movies and Yogurt (With Live & Active Cultures!) in partnership with Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, DC.
Protracted titles aren’t the only commonality here. Emma and Julia were Brown MFA students together. And became (and remain) good friends. Figured I’d ask ’em to have a chat for us! Which they did, via text, over the past few weeks. What they sent me could also be called… protracted. An edited portion was included in our March 21 Insider News. Here’s the whole shebang!
EMMA: Should we begin our conversation by talking about the Brown MFA Writing for Performance program, where we met?
Or should we begin with my gushing over your work, as a longtime fan of the clarity, comedy, and weight of your writerly voice, and the very alive buoyancy of your acting-performing?
Or should we begin by discussing our various gastroenterological diseases 😊?
JULIA: Ahahaha what if we spent the whole conversation talking about gastroenterological diseases?? I mean they did ramp up for us during our shared time at Brown, I feel 😅
Also tummy issues is something that connects us to Bailey too!
I mean other than the obvious connections you have with her!
Also why can’t we start with me gushing over your work!?
EMMA: We could likely have an entire conversation discoursing on how handling chronic gastroenterological diseases prepares you for a life in the theater…& it does seem like we began our discoveries of these ailments at Brown…maybe we should get the tap water in Providence checked…how interesting…
JULIA: I’m actually so excited to chat about Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods with you because I feel it is in some ways very different from your individual plays and yet feels so completely distinctly you
Maybe it’s that it feels a little more like your fiction work in which you are able to write with just a hair more abandon, not being tethered to such a thing as the idea of there being, like, a “set”. Or maybe it’s just that there are #wigs (an Emma speciality fave of mine)
(Also idk if you remember? One of the first exercises I read of yours in Workshop was a scene about a sister intern which I always think of in conjunction with this play hahaha)
EMMA: Oh I love this invocation of fiction practice, because I think Two Sisters is, among many other things, also an effort to distinguish how different genres of narrative actually *work* — I’ve been long interested in thinking how various texts ask (or refuse!) to be performed, and how an audience might be coaxed into a position of active readership, engaging in their faculties of critical engagement…
(Also, I’m about to begin rehearsals, so if I disappear until ~6pm, that’s why!)
(I do not remember any scenes about a sister intern, but it absolutely does not surprise me that such a scenario surfaced early on in graduate school…I have been obsessed with similar relational dynamics for the entirety of my writing life, which was once frightening to me, but which now has become a fact I am happy to fondle, as it were…)
Bailey is also a writer of fiction, which is something I discovered after I discovered her work in theater — fiction was, actually, some of the first writing we shared with one another, and is the kind of writing we consume most in our daily lives. I wonder how the imaginative spaces fiction allows us to access (sublimely imaginative, led-by-language, capable of real intimate privacy) is something Bailey and I have been, consciously or not, attempting to erect throughout this zany project, which is really, maybe secretly, really just about writing and reading alongside another person
Writing alongside another writer is a mode I’ve explored before, probably for reasons that are related to figuring out where the vital me of me is… by throwing my voice deeply into collaboration, I can try to hear where the parts of my own voice heard, or not. This is, I might argue, also something that interests me in my life as a homosexual
Julia, my first encounter with your work was in New York City — the locale of our childhoods! — where I became aware of a play of yours, Meet Murasaki Shikibu Followed by Book-Signing, and Other Things. It must have been between 2014-2016? I believe you were also…in this play? Playing Murasaki Shikibu, writer of The Tale of Genji, which is arguably one of the first novels. I remember reading about this play, and reading about you, and falling in love with all of its attendant concepts — of you writing and performing in this play, how you were pressing at the boundaries a play’s relationship with performance, and a play’s potential relationship with other artistic modes
I’m so curious to talk with you about Akira Kurosawa Explains His Movies and Yogurt (with Live & Active Cultures), a play that also entails your own talents as an actor, and which also engages in a theater’s relationship with other artistic modes…here, film!
Oh god, I have a trillion questions for you, and only one life in which to ask all these questions??? This is terrible.
Okay, I’ll begin: what is your relationship with history! Historical narratives, personal histories, and the past often appears — with a gut-punch of heart-breaking illumination — in your work. I’m curious to know more about this inclination of yours!
But we can, of course, go more methodically throughout this interview…I’m giving us things to chew on as I depart into a day acting like I am a Trucker, Cat Breeder, Paranormal Investigator, and, the role of a lifetime, Lesbian!
JULIA: These are the roles you deserve!!!!!!
Aww I love that about you and Bailey sharing writing and how it links to sharing this play!!
I’m so sorry but I have to say this!!!! That is so SWEET! 🥹
Okay okay so much I wanna respond to and so much I wanna ask!!!! A kind of torture this is indeed ahaha
Oh gosh yes I am so obsessed with writing about history but really its mostly about historical storytellers. Which I find so cringey and navel-gaze-y in a way ahaha, like me a storyteller being interested in other storytellers like get another hobby Julia for crying out loud
Once I get into a personal history of someone — actually anyone really — I start to realize how lonely they are and that really oh gosh just makes me want to uh be their friend!!!! And we can be lonely together ❤️ (🙄 lordy)
Part of my impulse to embody those lonely people too (like Murasaki & Kurosawa) is to befriend them in a way I think
Lonely people are really hungry and once I can find that hunger in a person, they make for a character I can sit with
Hunger is so related to desire — and Emma Horwitz I would say there are few contemporary playwrights who write about desire better than you!
Maybe not *about* desire? Maybe *for* desire? *with* desire??
My first encounter with your plays (other than the aforementioned masterpiece, sister intern) is your tour de force (can you say that about playwriting??) Kemps which is a wild & haunting & distinctly queer look at the yearning churning longings of a group of teenage girl campers. I remembered feeling so thrilled by how these girls all seemed like they might combust at any moment (and in some ways they do via lip synch!!), but they have this cruel societal pressure to KEEP IT TOGETHER which is exactly what being a teenage girl feels like. It is such a terrifying time, and you captured that abject terror to a T.
EMMA: When you decided to begin work on Akira, did you happen upon any particular film of his? (I know the answer to this question, but I need you to speak to this dare hidden in the soul of your play…I often describe Two Sisters as the product of an ongoing game of dare between me and Bailey)
Ah! You are so kind to say so! Desire is, for better or worse, almost all of what I care about — the powerful & confusing undercurrent of our lives that American culture is absolutely allergic to manifesting or considering in any extended way…even though desire undergirds everyone’s decisions…especially in regards to what you want for lunch!!!
Hunger and desire are twins
This is so fascinating — to reach out a hand and say: hold mine and I’ll hold yours. Maybe we can eat together. Your work, even when engaging in these plumbs through history, has such a quality of alive-ness. Of coming into being with a bang. You bring these figures back (or show them newly to us) with your literal breath. I’m really interested in this hunger of which you speak. It seems like a more deeply theatrical mode of thinking than what might usually be described as A Want (blegh)
& Listen, I am afflicted with the same navel-gaze re: writers! I think it’s how I’ve figured out how to be a living writer, not knowing any living writers before trying to become one myself. Through close observation, or readership, which I have and continue to argue is both one in the same, and love
Oh no, I’m texting from the train: forgive me that these are coming to you out of order
JULIA: Is that something you are conscious of when writing?? I know we in our Brown cohort especially talk a lot about the ethics of having bodies enact things, about witnessing things live–but I think you are always able to write about desire without, for lack of a better word, *doing* desire in like a egregious sticky way
Haha yes Want/Objective: Out! Hunger/Desire: In!!
EMMA: Our eternal grad school negotiations of desire and violence and ethics!
Maybe what I want to do in my writing is to point to the ways language is already always doing desire…I want my language to ignite an active and erotic imagination. Or maybe I’m arguing that imagination is an erotic function? And theater is a site for complicated scenes where what we are seeing isn’t always what we are hearing — through that juxtaposition, I’m excited about the ways an audience might trip into self confrontation…
Or maybe I’m a pervert! And that’s my societal position! So what! We all play a role!
JULIA: Playwrights are all perverts! We are sick sick sickos ahahaha
Language Is Already Always Doing Desire!!!!
Spread the word!!!!!!
EMMA: But to your point of consciousness: I write from a place of curiosity. From intuition above analysis. I am not trying to think too much. I am paying attention to relationships, moments, places, dynamics etc. that I can’t stop considering. I let a thought sit for a long time before writing of or about it, to see what legs its running on
What about you! How much are you thinking when you’re writing!
Are you conscious?
Awake, even?!?
JULIA: Lolololol a great q!
EMMA: Also, I want to pin this for each of us to answer in our own way but: we are, usually, regular playwrights who write texts for collaboration. We are usually not in our own plays. Why do you think we are performing in these specific pieces? I mean, they’re both seethingly personal, yes, but still. We could have hired lookalikes. Is it because something about the world of theater has changed? Economically and emotionally? Have WE changed?
JULIA: There’s two modes of writing for me: one is more think-y, when I’m thinking about my play as a logic puzzle. That’s usually when I’m doing more a bird’s eye view at looking at something that’s already a draft. My “plots” usually wind up more complex than they should be…
And then yes the other one is when I’m more in the weeds with the characters or a situation and I might be unconscious?? Or asleep??
Okay let me actually answer some of these Akira specific questions tho
When I decided to work on Akira, I had seen only one film!!! And at first I had no intention of seeing any more haha. Which I told a dramaturg once and he was like “that makes sense bc you are more interested in his legacy than his work” and I was like YES EXACTLY!!!
EMMA: Logic puzzle makes so much sense. Wait…do you do puzzles??? Bailey does and it has helped me understand how her writer brain works differently from mine (when I see a puzzle, my mind goes blank)
LEGACY!!!
THIS is a great word to think through your work with…
JULIA: Oh I love puzzles, Bailey and I should talk
I wanted to write about Akira for a while but I couldn’t find a way in. And I was like maybe I do need to watch more of his plays?? But how funny would it be to write a play about someone knowing so little!!
EMMA: (Legacy of Hans, of Kim-Jong Nam, of the Tazwas, even of Elinore…how do actions reverberate?)
JULIA: Lol WOW @me calling his FILMS “plays”
EMMA: What was the Akira play, I mean film, you watched!
JULIA: But as you know I was in YOUR CAR during grad school as you so kindly would drive us places sometimes when I was like “Oh oh I got it!!!! What if he’s doing a lecture on his films and all he can talk about is yogurt!?”
Yogurt was my way in 😋 (a hunger!)
I saw Seven Samurai in high school! Which tbh??? Pretty good!!
I did watch one more “play” of his after I started writing because unfortunately I did need more reference points for him and his legacy
I watched Ikiru bc it is the most popular of his films in Japan
(It was turned into a musical! So! A play!!)
Wait I don’t think I know where the seed for Two Sisters started?? Was it indeed a dare??How did you co-write??
And gosh yes we must talk about this whole being in our own plays situation!!
I (and Bailey!) have a little bit more of a history with that, so it feels like the biggest dare for you!
Esp since I know you have often pondered about the ways in which you *don’t* reveal *Emma* in your plays
EMMA: You know what, thank you for pointing that out. I forget often that this isn’t Bailey’s first rodeo. But it really is mine! The last play I was in was in Maria Irene Fornes’ Promenade, which was Milo Cramer’s thesis at Bard. I am truly loathe to reveal an obvious “me” in my other plays, and will do everything in my power to obscure my self in favor of my characters…each of whom are…my self?! Oh no! I’ve made major miscalculations…
JULIA: 😂
For me, and maybe for you?, there is a bit of something having been through a production recently as playwright recently and feeling that sharp separation from the actors once tech begins
And being spurred to be a little like “I want in!! I want to be where the fun is!!”
To be a little less lonely 😂
EMMA: I had such a similar experience Julia!
We’ve talked about this
JULIA: Yes we have!
EMMA: But being in the dark audience during tech and watching the actors continue to bring life to the play (this was Mary Gets Hers in 2023) was almost…a devastation? Is that too intense? It felt terrible, to have to die as the playwright
JULIA: Oh it’s awful
EMMA: Obviously it’s not a literal death, but you do have to shut up & let them do what they’ve practiced. You atrophy as a proper playwright, into a vestigial thing. Your language remains, your text is spoken, but as a living playwright, living in the back of the theater, something strange happened to me
JULIA: Big Grief
EMMA: Huge grief!
JULIA: I also wonder too if there is something about the chaos of this time? That is urging us to not waste any of it not telling truth?
And as soon as there is an actor you are already lying
Maybe that’s in us — and maybe the producers who are looking for plays — too??
EMMA: I feel that deeply
We have known each other through personally and globally chaotic times — has it crystallized urgency for us?
JULIA: Yes perhaps it has!!
Or perhaps we are just lucky collateral of the current One-Person-Show syndrome/epidemic??
EMMA: Maybe it’s that, too!
Candidly, when Bailey and I were coming up with the idea for this project that would later become Two Sisters, we were both frustrated at the limitations playwrights are confronting in our field — dwindling resources, crawling on hands and knees peddling plays, being told no a trillion times to developmental opportunities we’d applied to a trillion and one times. And! We kept seeing shows where there was a lesbian side character, usually a lead’s sibling, that was always fighting with her girlfriend. Lots of lesbians written by non lesbians. It was getting exhausting.
We wanted to write a play with and for lesbians that wasn’t about fighting with your girlfriend, but celebrating the overactive imaginations lesbians have to foster in order to exist on their own terms
Now, Julia, you do not perform alone in this play. Tell me more about this. And: did Brown force you to cast more actors in this play?
Or: tell me about your collaboration with Aileen, and your hopes for this iteration in DC!
Omg you’re going to be in DC…let’s sidebar about this…
JULIA: Oh I am acutely aware I am not in this alone having literally just come off of a whirlwind of callbacks
EMMA: Julia, one last question for our interview. It’s a statement and a question. We are both artists who cherish our relationships with other artists. We can’t go into all the mishegas of Brown, but suffice to say, I wouldn’t have survived those years without your brilliance as a thinker, writer, community member, and, maybe most importantly, friend. Your dramaturgy is only more influential for the ways you’re able to see the scope of my whole project, as opposed to the problems of a discrete play. It is really the apex of Being Seen. It is sublime to me that we get to walk this long road of being theatermakers together in this difficult age. I find myself infinitely buoyed by the questions your work asks, and inspired sitting on the perimeter of your working life, observing habits and interests of yours that have only deepened since our time together in Providence. Working alongside other artists is my reason for being. And with you? Full of laughter, joy, gossip, and life camaraderie. I’m curious, for you, what your relationship is with art and friendship? I’ve muddied my personal waters so deeply, and I’m not interested in creating separation between the spheres of my life, maybe even as a politic. I love working with my friends and lovers! What about you? How does your art making influence your friendship having? Maybe there’s another question here that will inspire you…
JULIA: Oh goodness goodness I would say the same of you!! I actually genuinely believe I would not have made it out of grad school alive without your camaraderie, your friendship!!
Because of our revolving door of teachers, I often tell people my cohort was my head of program, and that is not a joke. I learned so much from you, not just because you are such an exact and astute play examiner/dramaturg but also because of getting to experience so much of your work and also *how* you work. You have such a clear understanding of your writing and your advocacy for your own voice has always been a marvel to witness and something to aspire to.
It’s also why as you know I try to sneak you in somehow to as many rooms of mine as I can 😆 That and also–it’s so important to have friends in the room!!
All I wanna do is work with my friends 😭
Sure for the *fun* especially because the playwright life is a lonely one
But also because I do think when you understand each other as people, you can get on the same page for the thing you’re making so much faster
Also it leaves out the insecurities that come out sometimes in disagreements and the like
Oh! I forgot to mention somewhere up there everything I learn from your plays!
Precision, simplicity, wit, the rhythm in the language
What love is!
The beauty of a tableau!
How to be a little imp 😈
All lessons I hold very dear
To your point, love and writing have to be intertwined! So we cannot be expected to separate the spheres!!
Always immensely grateful to be journeying alongside each other.
EMMA: Oh goodness — it’s been over a week since there has been a reply to this and that is entirely my fault. I texted you from my computer, which works half the time, and doesn’t work the other half of the time. This is, of course, my fault.
Suffice to say, I am deeply, deeply grateful for these words Julia, more than you can know! I report from the just beginning of tech, where things seem like they will never cohere, until, of course, as if by magic, they do. I’ve learned to trust the creative process of things necessarily coming undone before they can Be Done, but man, it’s ego-defying to experience!
Let me tell the likely largely New York audience reading this conversation why they need to get their asses on a train and go to DC to see your work:
I first saw a workshop of Julia’s play back in the winter of 2019, directed by Aileen Wen McGroddy, who is returning to direct this iteration. I don’t know if I can remember an experience in a theater as visceral, unexpected, and enjoyably experimental as that workshop production of Akira Kurosawa Explains His Yogurt with Live and Active Cultures. Thank god New Georges has teamed up with Woolly Mammoth to make this experience possible for so many others. I use the word experimental intentionally, because the structure of this play defies narrative commonality, and instead makes way for an auto-fiction of originality, precision, and an honesty that makes my head spin. Have we a writer so brave?! This play is a gut-punch, a joyous non-lesson, a coming to mysterious understandings that need not be solved, but sat within. Thank goodness Julia will be our guide.
JULIA: And let me tell those same folks why they gotta get their butts out to HERE and see Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods! (We have got to start a long title/sentence as a title club!) Emma and Bailey have created something other-worldly, a melding of two brilliant minds. It is a tender strange funny fever dream love letter to intimacy and to the lesbian imaginary to the EROTICS, which the American theatre seriously needs more of. It’s one of those magical, special pieces of theatre that you see in a tiny space that is maybe someone’s apartment (like I did) and that you get sad more people didn’t get to see–but now more people can!! So you better not miss it! And it’s only an hour so you absolutely have no excuse.