Dale Dunn Santa Fe, NM

An Interview with the Playwright

How did you hear about “The Seven”?

I think I heard about it in the Santa Fe Theatre Salon newsletter.

What was the impetus/basis/inspiration for writing the piece?

I was inspired to write “Parakeet Love” when I read about a mass burial site uncovered recently on the outskirts of Albuquerque. Initially there was intense media coverage. The bodies of 13 women had been found buried in shallow graves in the desert. Once these women were labeled prostitutes and drug addicts, however, the story disappeared from the headlines and the case went cold. I wondered how the families of these young women were coping with not only the grizzly murders, but also their daughters’ pictures on the front page of the newspaper with only the words “prostitute and drug addict” used to describe them.

Is this play representational of your writing style? Is it similar to or different from your other plays?

Since I have worked as a journalist, I tend to gravitate towards “true” stories that require lots of research. This allows me to put off writing the play itself as long as possible. Once I am out of the books, I usually take a giant leap away from reality and make use of the magical, the surreal and the bizarre possibilities of theater to tell the story in a new way. In my play “Body Burden” which is set in Los Alamos, Robert Oppenheimer and a Girl Scout from the 60’s do some serious time/space travel to assist the main character in uncovering the secrets of her past. And in my latest play “Crocodile Love” a journalist experiments with an ancient tribe’s ability to be in two places at once, a technique she learns from the bellhop at her hotel in Johannesburg.

What is the role of the short work in your playwriting career?

For me, short works are like a pack of Black Cat firecrackers - light them up and watch them explode on stage. It seems like you’ve got to have at least a couple of ten-minute and one-act plays up your sleeve these days for theatres that are looking to string them together into an evening. Sometimes short works can be the impetus for a longer, more developed play, but most often they’re just what they’re meant to be – brief, intense bursts of emotion, light and sound.

What is your favorite play? Who is your favorite playwright?

Thornton Wilder’s OUR TOWN must be my favorite play, because I keep going back to it. As far as favorite playwrights, there’s Beckett and Ionesco, because they got me started; Shepard, because he speaks to my cowgirl heart, Paula Vogel, Sarah Ruhl, Suzann-Lori Parks, and Lynn Nottage because they’re out there fighting the fight; and Tony Kushner, because ANGELS IN AMERICA is brilliant.

What is your next playwriting venture?

In an effort to get my latest play, CROCODILE LOVE, up on its feet, I am part of a Playwright/Directors workshop at Santa Fe Performing Arts. I’m also working with a group of artists to put together an evening of short plays written, directed, designed and produced by Santa Fe women in theatre.

For my next play, I am doing research about nuclear testing in the Nevada desert in the 50’s and 60’s and how those tests affected the surrounding communities, mostly Mormon and Native-American families. This is a companion piece to an earlier work, BODY BURDEN, which is centered around radioactive experiments that were performed on children in Los Alamos in the 60’s. Eventually, there will be a trilogy, or perhaps more appropriately, a Trinity of works about the consequences of the atomic age.

Is there anything you would like to add?

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