I recently had a conversation with Permanent Collection playwright Thomas Gibbons. Here’s part one of our talk.

Jacqueline Lawton: So to start could you tell me a little bit about where you live (maybe where and what sort of neighborhood)–describe the street where you live–what can you hear if you open a window, what can you see if you look out that window.
Thomas Gibbons: My family and I live in Devon, one of the older suburbs west of Philadelphia. Most of the houses on our street (including ours) date from the 1920s and are about a hundred feet apart, with large yards and plenty of trees. When the windows are open we hear the wind in the trees. We frequently see deer or a fox in our back yard.

JL: Then tell me a little bit about your favorite place to write. Do you write in the same place?
TG: I write in a room devoted to that purpose. It has built-in bookcases, a desk with an old chair, and not much else.

JL: Give us a little background on where you’re from originally, where you grew up, how you ended up where you are now…
TG: I was born in Philadelphia, grew up in the suburbs, and have lived either in the city or the surrounding area my entire life.

JL: Other than being a playwright, what other forms of writing have you done? Were you always drawn to the theatre? How is writing for an audience, writing a work that will be performed live, different (other than the form and format) from the other forms of writing you’ve done?
TG: I started writing seriously when I was a teenager, primarily short stories, and envisioned becoming a novelist. In my senior year in college I took a playwriting course, wrote a one-act play that ended up (through sheer luck) being produced by a small theatre company in Philadelphia, and never returned to fiction. I felt that I’d stumbled into the medium that allowed me to find my voice.

JL: Describe for me all the sensations you had the first time you had one of your plays produced and you sat in the audience while it was performed…what was different about the characters you created? How much input did you have in the directing of that work?
TG: The one-act play that was my first production was originally given a staged reading, and our choice for the central character came down to two actors: one who played the part exactly as I’d envisioned it, and another who made the part something completely unexpected, almost shockingly unlike my own vision, but undeniably brilliant. The director and I argued for hours – I wanted the first actor, he wanted the second – and finally I gave in. The actor gave a marvelous reading, and when the play was given a full production the following season, he was my only choice for the part and gave a performance that even now, after many years, lives in my memory as one of the finest I’ve ever seen on any stage. In other words, I was lucky enough to learn, with my first play, the fundamental lesson that collaboration lies at the heart of theatre. As a playwright, you learn you’ll never see on stage the play that’s in your head; but with luck and the right collaborators, you might see something better.

JL: What is it about writing plays that draws you…as opposed to writing poetry, songs, or fiction?
TG: I’ve grown to like the ruthless practicality of it—the fact that what I’ve written has to work, before an audience whose judgment is immediate (even if they’re not aware of it); and if it doesn’t work, it has to be fixed or cut.

JL: What inspires you to write?
TG: I wish I had a better answer, but I like sitting in a room by myself, with only paper and pen at hand. All writers like this. Any writer who talks about the loneliness of writing is lying. Also, we don’t have to wear ties.

JL: What do you hope to convey in the plays that you write ‑ what are they about? What sorts of people, situation, circumstances, do you like to write about?
TG: For the past 10 years or so I’ve been writing about race ‑ specifically, about the vast divide that separates the white and African-American experiences of living in America, and the mutual incomprehension with which we gaze at each other across the gulf. As in Permanent Collection, my characters are people who run up against the abrasive surface of our racial history. Recently, though, I’ve decided that I’ve said what I have to say about this, and it’s time to move on to other subjects.

Watch for part two of my conversation with Thomas Gibbons – coming to this blog in the coming days. We’ll talk more specifically about the situation, characters, and controversies covered in Permanent Collection.

Jacqueline Lawton
Dramaturg