Tonight, Molly Smith Metzler's play Elemeno Pea opens in its world premiere run at the Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival of New Plays. But even in the middle of the intense schedule of final preparations for the production, Molly found time to answer a few questions for us.
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| Molly Smith Metzler |
I always enjoy hearing the “story behind the story.” What inspired Elemeno Pea?
Well, to tell you about Elemeno Pea, let me back up and first tell you how I discovered playwriting, because they’re related. During my final semester of undergrad at SUNY Geneseo, I signed up for an Intro to Playwriting class with Dr. Terry Browne. At the time, I had applied to PhD programs in Comp Lit; I was a super nerdy English major who had never even taken creative writing. But then this one playwriting elective changed everything! I fell madly in love with playwriting, and in the final hour of college (May of my senior year!), I decided to do a 180 and completely switch gears. As my college friends were going off to serious careers and jobs, I actually pulled out of the PhD program I’d committed to and decided to pursue writing instead. (Looking back, this must’ve horrified my Mom—but you’d never had known! She was so supportive!) Anyhow, I had read somewhere that Eugene O’Neill wrote Long Day’s Journey from his ocean house in Connecticut, so I thought “Yeah! I’ll move to Martha’s Vineyard—by the ocean—and write my own Long Day’s Journey!”
