Matthew Myers talks Stray Dogs

Matthew Myers has gone from winning the 2013 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award to having his play, Stray Dogs, included in the current Essential Theatre Festival. The play is about a wayward couple who are involved in a few sordid things, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be a little sweetness, it is love after all. Below, Myers talks about Stray Dogs, his Tarantino comparisons, and how characters drive it all forward.

You can see Myers play, along with other plays written by Georgia playwrights at the Essential Theatre Festival going on now till August 11.

Q. Your play, Stray Dogs, won the 2013 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award. What has it been like to go from award winner to producing the play for the festival?

A. I was super flattered to be picked. I knew several other playwrights who had worked with Essential so I was honored to be counted among them. Still, I had never actually heard the play out loud, beyond myself reading it as I wrote it. So, it’s been a trip seeing it on its feet. I’ve tried to let the production breath, let everyone do their job without me peeking my head in too much, and that’s been a funny process in itself. I actually like it, because it’s like someone cooking in the kitchen while I’m in the living room. I can smell stuff cooking, hear pots and pans and things, and I’m not exactly sure what all of it is. And some times I sneak in and steal a spoon of something, but on opening night, I’ll sit down like everyone else and be surprised.

Q. Stray Dogs is described as Quentin Tarantino style and includes all of his usual suspects: humor, romance, crime. Was the play inspired by certain films? And did you have a vision of a film-like play?

A. I do enjoy Tarantino, although I wasn’t consciously trying to ‘ape’ him. I like True Romance, which he wrote, so I can see how that could have been an influence on me. Honestly, I really love Jez Butterworth and Martin McDonagh, and they’re both theatre guys. Of course they get Tarantino comparisons too. Hard to say. But I really love theatre and wasn’t trying for a film-esque experience. I did set some goals for myself to have the violence be a little different than I had seen in other plays, a little more visceral. I think theatre has a weird competition with film but I don’t think we can fight film on that level, so I didn’t try. I just wanted to write something fun and engaging and see if we could pull it off on stage.

Q. The love story seems to be heading for trouble. The two love birds are edgy, conflicted and involved in a lot of not-so-good stuff. Did you plan on having the opposites / similarities of the couple mirror the authority and crime?

A. Yes. Next question. Just kidding. No one is immune to loneliness or falling in love, and I thought that made for interesting contrast with their day-to-day lives, sure. I think that’s a funny thing about relationships, especially at the beginning, is that often in the infatuation stage you forget about the day-to-day parts of your life, like sleep and eating and laundry and stuff. I think our two love birds forget how seedy their lives are until it hits them square in the face. Hopefully, the audience will too and settle in to see two outcasts fall for each other in the eye of the storm.

Q. What aspects of being a Georgian did you bring into this work?

A. That’s a funny question. I guess it influences everything I do. I’ve lived here longer than I’ve lived anywhere else in my life. It’s outside my window right now. I love Georgia. The play isn’t set here, because there was a landscape that I needed that Georgia doesn’t quite offer in the same way. It’s actually the openness of Georgia and the fact that it isn’t claustrophobic feeling to me that I like. But I wanted my characters to be a little more boxed in, both physically and metaphorically. I think there are elements of my growing up process here that are swimming around in there, although someone smarter than me would probably have to point out which ones those are.

Q. What is the writing process like for you? Do you go from plot to Character or character to plot?

A. I’m more interested in character than circumstance. I can start off with a nugget of a plot, like ‘what if someone tried to rob a public library’, but then from there I’d start to flush out who the characters are and why they’d try to rob a library or be there. That makes the writing not so laborious. Once I’ve got my people figured out, then I can set them in the circumstance and let nature take its course. Fun, compelling people give it stakes for me, because I don’t want anything bad to happen to them, although inevitably it will. Often I’ll have a dream about the plot nugget, then I’ll wake up, brew a pot of coffee, and then I’ll start writing it.