TONIGHT: Ten questions for a local playwright

TONIGHT at the Dramatists Guild, 1501 Broadway, 7:30 p.m.
January 28, 2011
by C.J. Ehrlich and Philip J. Kaplan

Q: Where did you get the inspiration for THE CUPCAKE CONSPIRACY, your full-length comedy, which is having a reading next Friday, January 28, as part of The Dramatists Guild’s Friday Night Footlights series?

A: The inspiration, eh? That’s hard to pin down.

Q: Can you try?

A: I sat down one day with my collaborator, Philip J. Kaplan. We were looking for ideas for a new play. So we asked each other, “What gets you really angry? What is it you truly hate?” Almost as one, he said, “Terrorism!” and I said, “Overpriced cupcakes!” From there on, it pretty much wrote itself.

Q: Are you kidding me? Who doesn’t like cupcakes? They’re so cute! Especially with lovely blue frosting and pink flowers and those adorable ducky heads!!!!!

A: I’m sorry; to me expensive cupcakes and cupcakeries are leading indicators of the decline of Western civilization. Then again, it is hard to resist those ducky heads.

Q: What’s your play about?

A: It’s about two hours long, so we cut some of the visual gags for the reading.

Q: I mean, can you summarize the action?

A: THE CUPCAKE CONSPIRACY is a comedy about a separated married couple whose marriage is on the rocks because they’ve stopped communicating. They aren’t ready to let go, but they test the waters by going on blind dates behind each other’s backs. This leads to them both getting involved in a terrorist conspiracy, involving cupcakes. Evil cupcakes. They learn that “Terrorism is easy. Marriage is complicated.”

Q: Is this the first play you wrote?

A: No.

Q: What was another?

A: I wrote my first play when I was eight. It was called “Snow White and the One Dwarf Who Thought He Was Seven Because He Had Multiple Personality Disorder and an Inferiority Complex.”

Q: Hmm. How did it go over?

A: It was a hit in our backyard. My parents are psychologists and they invited their whole group. The audience was electrified, in many ways.

Q: I’m wondering. Does this play have anything to do with The Cupcake Controversy?

A: No, but I think it’s cool that after all the kerfuffle and unnecessary name calling, those boys learned a lesson, and got on national TV, and were given a tour of an actual cupcake factory and will probably have a much better bake sale next time with all the right permits. I’m proud of them. I expect to hear great things about them in the future. Perhaps they will create a cupcake in honor of this play.

Q: Is it hard to organize a reading in NYC?

A: Between us we know a lot of excellent actors, which is half the battle. These actors would make a reading of the phone book sound exciting. But we realized, we only have 90 minutes! We’d barely get through the A’s! So we settled for having them read our play. It’ll still be plenty exciting.

Q: Why do a reading?

A: As a writers, we need to hear an audience’s reactions so we can take the play to the next level. Playwriting is a strange art form where you can work for a year, but the work only begins to exist when there’s an audience to complete the collaboration. What I’m saying is, if a play falls in a forest, it does not make a sound.

Secondly, we’re hoping some discerning audience member will get a sudden urge to develop an up-and-coming comedy about marriage and terrorism, so we can eventually put on a full production that actually has cupcakes in it. And yes, we’ll have all the right permits.

Q: Wasn’t that more than ten questions?

A: The CUPCAKE CONSPIRACY
    A reading of a new comedy
    FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2011
    7.30 p.m. at the Dramatists Guild
    Frederick Loewe Room
    1501 Broadway
    Suite 710
    New York, NY 10036
    Admission is free. And freedom is priceless
   
Chappaqua resident C.J. Ehrlich’s one-act plays have been produced in Manhattan, Brooklyn, six states outside New York, and one province. Her “Noir in Second Class” will be published in Smith & Kraus’s “Best Ten-Minute Plays of 2011,” and “Home Sweet Homeland Security” can be found in the forthcoming Heuer anthology, “G-Men in G-Strings: The J. Edgar Hoover Follies.”

Philip J. Kaplan, a member of the Brooklyn Playwrights Collective, is the author of “Hollywood Musicals: Best, Worst and Most Unusual” (Beekman House). His full-length comedies include “Violent Overthrow of the Government (and other Family Matters).” His “Dante’s Inferno: The Motion Picture” will be published in Smith & Kraus’s “Best Ten-Minute Plays of 2011.”