University Place

Artist Talk: Nathan Alan Davis

– Merlaine Angwall: Good morning. It is my pleasure to introduce to you Mr. Nathan Alan Davis. He is a playwright from Rockford, Illinois, now residing in New York City. His plays include The Refugee Plays, which is premiering at the McCarter Theatre in 2020, Nat Turner in Jerusalem, the New York Theatre Workshop, Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea, an NNPN Rolling World Premiere, and The Wind in the Breeze, Cygnet Theatre. He received a Whiting Award in Drama in 2018. Other awards include the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Citation, Stavis Playwright Award, Blue Ink Award, and Lorraine Hansberry Award. Mr. Davis is a lecturer in Theater at Princeton University. Please put away your cellphones and hold your questions until the end of his lecture. Thank you very much. Mr. Davis. [audience applauding]

– Hello. Good morning.
– Audience: Good morning.
– Thank you for being patient with me while I went the wrong way on a roundabout. [audience laughing] It’s a lot of roundabouts here. [audience laughing] First off, I wanted to begin by acknowledging that we are gathered here in the ancestral homeland of the Menominee, the Sioux, the Ho-Chunk, and near the lands of the Ojibwe, the Anishinaabe, and that we honor their stewardship of the lands and the waters in the past and the present, and my warm greetings to any Indigenous peoples who are here today or watching on this feed. And I wanna thank the Theatre Department here at UW-Oshkosh, Jane, Merlaine, all the students, not only for doing the play, Nat Turner in Jerusalem, but also, just for inviting me here to be here with you.

This is one of my favorite things, to be able to talk to folks about theater, to be in a room with people doing theater, to try to connect with students, artists, people who are on a path of discovery about their own artistic journey, and whenever I’m able to travel to talk about theater and plays, I feel like I’m reminded of why I do this. So thank you for being part of that for me. I wanna cover quite a bit today. I’m gonna talk about Nat Turner in Jerusalem, which I hope you see the play, if you haven’t, the students are doing a wonderful job. The production’s incredible. So I’ll talk about the process of making that play, but I’m also gonna want to open up, relatively early, for questions, because really, I want this conversation to be as much about you as about me. I know it’s a little bit different in a lecture type of a format. I’ll certainly have a lot to say, and I tend to go on sometimes, and I can get on a tangent, but I actually, I really wanna meet you where you’re at, and I want this conversation to be about your journey as much as mine. So please keep that in mind when we get to the questions. I think one of the things I wanted to mention up top is that making of art is a necessarily mysterious process, and so, even the presumption that I could have something clear and articulate to say about it might be inaccurate, not because I don’t believe in what I’m doing or think I quote-unquote, know what I’m doing, but because I think not knowing can be just as useful as knowing, when it comes to creating art, and when it comes to putting yourself into a writing process.

And for myself, one of the ways that I know I’m onto something when it comes writing a play is when there are questions that I can’t answer. When I feel haunted by something, when I feel curious about something, when I feel compelled by something, and I don’t know exactly how to think of it, or what to think of it, or what I should say about it, but I feel a need to engage with it, and that, certainly, is something that happened in the process of making Nat Turner in Jerusalem. One point of context that might be useful for you, as I talk a about the story of Nat Turner, is my religious background. I’m a member of the Baha’i faith, and the Baha’i faith is an independent worldwide religion, which was founded by Bah’u’llh, whose name means “the Glory of God. ”

It was founded in Persia, now Iran, in 1844, and the forerunner of Bah’u’llh is named the Bb or “the Gate,” who also lived in Persia in the 1800s, and actually, this year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Bb; he was born in 1819, and he was put to death by a firing squad in 1850, and the essential teachings of the Bb, and then, later, Bah’u’llh, are about the unity of the human race and without getting into an entire lecture about the religion, Bah’u’llh claimed to be the promised one of all religions, and to be ushering in an era of universal peace, which would be marked by justice, by racial unity, by the equality of women and men, and by the unfolding of an ever-advancing civilization. So that was sort of my religious upbringing and background, and it’s a religion that I continue to practice today. As Merlaine mentioned, I grew up in Rockford, Illinois. I am the child of a interracial marriage, so my father is black, mother is white, and I grew up with an identity as somebody who is part of this story of the coming unity of the human race, and having to deal with my own feelings about what it meant to be mixed-race, what it meant to be black, what it meant to have a white mother, but not be considered white, per se. All of these things are part of my upbringing and my background, but actually, when it comes to the story of Nat Turner, I didn’t know much about him at all until a few years ago. I don’t recall learning anything about Nat Turner in elementary school or in high school, middle school, even in college, I somehow missed that part of history.

I certainly knew who Nat Turner was, I knew that he had led a rebellion of enslaved people against the people who claimed to be their masters. That was about it. I didn’t even know he was from Virginia until I started to look into it, so a few years ago, I was thinking, Nat Turner, what do I know about Nat Turner? And I had googled Nat Turner, and what came up was the document, The Confessions of Nat Turner by T. R. Gray, which is an official court document that contains Nat Turner’s confession of his rebellion, called insurrection by Gray, that was published in 1831, and it explains what he did, according to Nat Turner, through T. R. Gray. The facts of the rebellion are that we know that Nat Turner led an uprising of enslaved people and that they killed somewhere around 50 white people, many of which were women and children. Probably as many blacks were killed, as well, in the aftermath, and even more in the aftermath after that, when it came to retribution and all these things. And it was something that really shook the consciousness of not only Southampton County, which is where Nat Turner was, but Virginia, and the nation as a whole.

It was something that was certainly the talk of the day, and continues to reverberate now. And one of the things that I should probably mention is that, you know, I’m not a historian by any means, and when you’re writing about history, I believe you certainly have an obligation to learn about what, as much as you can about what you’re writing about. However, you are also an artist. You have to meet the history with your heart, and not only with your mind. And so, for me, the thing that drew me about the story of Nat Turner’s rebellion was that it surprised me, the way that it was described, and there are quite a lot of factors to consider, in terms of the confession. There are some who believe, rightly so, that we have to look at the confession with a definite grain of salt, so to speak, because T. R. Gray, as a white man living in Virginia in the 1800s, had a certain view of what the racial caste system was, and was supposed to be, that was the system they were living under, the system of slavery, and he certainly had his own prejudices and beliefs that would’ve affected the way that he told that story. But what’s interesting to me about the confession itself or the document itself, I should say, is that one, Thomas Gray does make an effort to distinguish his own opinions from what he believes are the facts. He cross-examines Nat Turner, based on the evidence that he has available about what happened, and believes that Nat Turner is telling the truth about those things.

He says, in the document, that he is giving his words with little or no alteration, and there are times, in the confession, where he actually speaks highly of Nat Turner, and not only negatively. There’s certainly an overall negative characterization of Nat Turner in the document that’s inarguable, that’s definitely there, but also, it seemed very clear that he was affected by Nat Turner, and while having no need or motivation to say anything positive about him, he still does. He talks about the fact that Nat Turner was one of the most intelligent people he had ever met, he talks about his charisma, and so, he also, he even defends Nat Turner against certain claims made against him. For example, some people said that Nat Turner simply wanted to steal, and that he was drunk and crazy, and so that was the reason that he did this uprising, so he could take money and get drunk, and Thomas Gray makes an effort to say that he’s never heard of Nat Turner ever having a drink in his life, those types of things. So he’s trying to set the record straight, in the sense that he can from his perspective. But, and that’s not to absolve him of the other negative things he says about Nat Turner, that he was a fanatic, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, but it became very clear to me that there was some kind of effect that happened in this meeting between Nat Turner and Thomas Gray. They were in a prison cell in Jerusalem, Virginia. That city is no longer called Jerusalem. It’s now called Courtland, Virginia. They’ve changed the name.

And through a series of interviews, he came up with this confession, but the thing that really surprised me, when it came to Nat Turner himself, as characterized by Gray, is that I was more or less expecting to see the motivations for the uprising being something to the effect of “I was a slave, “I didn’t want to be a slave, therefore, I rebelled. ” That would make sense to me. But that’s not at all what is in the confession. In the confession, Nat Turner begins, and I’ll just quote directly from it, the confession begins with Nat Turner saying, “Sir, you have asked me to give a history “of the motives which induced me to undertake “the late insurrection, as you call it. “To do so, I must go back to the days of my infancy, “and before I was born. ” So right away, he’s saying, “This didn’t start, “you know, yesterday, “this didn’t start a few days ago or a few years ago. “This started before I was born. ” And he goes on to talk about the fact that his parents and his grandmother believed, from his infancy, that he was meant for great things, that he was a prophet. It talked about the fact that he had seen things, and described things that happened before his birth, without knowing them. And so, that had a great deal to do with how Nat Turner saw himself.

He also talks about learning to read, almost without effort, at an early age, and because of all these things, he was looked at in his community as being a prophet, as being somebody of great potential, or great understanding, and he was even a preacher in his younger years, an actual preacher, and he did actually read. He had his own Bible, which is now on display at the Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D. C. , and so, right away, my understanding of Nat Turner’s story was reframed. This isn’t simply about a rebellion. [coughing] Excuse me, it’s about more of a vision. And so, this sort of intersected with, again, my own understanding of what was happening religiously and spiritually at the time. As I mentioned, the Baha’i religion that I belong to began in 1844. In the 1800s, there were many new sects and new religions, new offshoots of religions that were beginning around that time. It was a time of great messianic expectation, both in the East and the West.

So in the Christian and the Muslim worlds, in the 19th century, there was this expectation of the coming of a new day, of the judgment day. This was all going on, and the Baha’i faith was a part of that, the birth of the Baha’i faith was a part of that, and so, when I encountered Nat Turner talking about these signs, he could see into the heavens, and how when he saw blood on the leaves, he believed that he was being called to action. When he saw an eclipse of the sun, he believed that it was a sign from God he was supposed to do something. This is why he took up arms against his oppressors, and what I did was I simply took Nat Turner at his word. It wasn’t hard for me, given my background, to think, “Okay, there is some great spiritual upheaval “happening in the world right now, “and Nat Turner is tapping into that. ” And so, when I read the document, I was primarily thinking about that part of the drama, so to speak, and so, the play, when it came out, as the play came out, or developed, or as I wrote it, it really became, essentially, a drama about an understanding of spiritual forces. And in the play, as I constructed it, it takes place the night before Nat Turner’s execution, so once he’s captured, he’s brought to the capital of the county, which is in Jerusalem, and he is questioned, and then he is put to death, but before that, he’s interviewed. [coughing] And so, I imagined the possibility of a final meeting between Thomas Gray and Nat Turner, the night before the execution. And this is where, of course, again, art departs from history. Nat Turner and Thomas Gray did actually meet, privately, as happens in the play, but they didn’t actually meet the night before Nat Turner was put to death.

That was something that, a situation that I fabricated for the sake of the drama. However, when we were doing the research for the play, and I say, we, I mean, me and the director and the team at New York Theatre Workshop, who was doing the first production, we really relied heavily on the historical facts and the scholarship available, because it felt like the right thing to do, in terms of looking at what actually happened, not simply what we would have liked to have happened. Again, the premise of the play is fabricated, but a lot of the details that I was able to lean on dramatically were not, and actually, as you know, the old saying, is, “The truth is stranger than fiction.” It really is, in many ways. One of the stories that illustrates that is that early on in the process of the play, I had written something to the effect that Thomas Gray is a nonbeliever, an atheist, ’cause Nat Turner’s making all of these sort of religious observations, and making the appeal to Thomas Gray based on religion, based on belief and faith, assuming that Thomas Gray has that same belief. And, spoiler alert, Thomas Gray doesn’t share that belief. He, in fact, is an atheist, and doesn’t see the religious justification for actions as valid, particularly when it comes to violence. I had some, when I wrote that part of the dialogue, and when it became clear that was the direction the character was moving in, I actually had some, instinctively, it felt right, it was certainly good for dramatic purposes, but I was also like, “Really? “Is that actually true?” ‘Cause you know, you’re thinking of Virginia, you’re thinking, 1830s. You’re not thinking that people call themselves atheists, so to speak, or talk about not believing in God. [coughing] That wasn’t my general impression, thinking about the time with the little information that I had, and some of the people at the theater also brought that up, saying, “Are you sure about this?”‘Cause this is Virginia in the 1830s, “and doesn’t seem like that would be a thing.”

And I was like, “Yeah, okay, maybe not, I don’t know.” So then, over the course of our research, we actually discovered that, and there’s a lot more written about Thomas Gray than Nat Turner, for obvious reasons, I would think, and Thomas Gray was actually talked about as being an embarrassment to his friends, because he talked against God, so to speak. It actually was in the history, and then, what’s more, there was an account written that on his deathbed, and he died not long after Nat Turner, actually. He became ill, he had a very tragic life, because his wife died, his child died young, but Thomas Gray also died, I believe, around five years or so after the insurrection, and apparently, on his deathbed, he was quoting Bible verses and talking about Revelations and this kind of thing.

And so, it seemed to me that a confirmation of the instinct I had about Thomas Gray being affected by this private audience he had with Nat Turner. Again, that’s not me saying factually, “This is exactly what happened.” I’m not claiming to know, and I’m not claiming to have an authoritative viewpoint, but based on the evidence that’s there, it certainly supports the possibility of it. And again, theater is really about possibilities and it’s about imagination, and it’s about the sense we make of history now, [coughing] and it’s understanding, how the understanding of history now relates to our present world. And so, that was a very, that was a moment, again, where the history and the imagination collided in a way I didn’t expect. And oftentimes, when we don’t really look at history, we don’t know strange it is.

I find that the more I actually read real accounts, real historical accounts, letters, you know, people’s recollections of things that they witnessed, they’re fascinating and they’re dramatic and they’re weird, and oftentimes, we assume that history has to be this cut and dry distant thing. Another thing that was an interesting part of the development process of the play, was I mentioned that it really is, in essence, a drama about perspectives and about belief, and about faith and all these things. And those aren’t really typical things to dramatize or easy things to dramatize, especially in theater that we typically see nowadays. Certainly, people having faith as part of their background is a thing that we see all the time, in dramatic characters, but having a play that centers around faith, essentially, can be a challenge, and there was a change that was made during the process that was key, and one that I wrestled with quite a bit, and frankly, I still do. But originally, when I wrote the first draft of the play, Nat Turner was actually quite ecstatic and happy to be a martyr, and there are some parts of The Confessions of Nat Turner that indicate that he was, in fact, he did consider himself a martyr, and my understanding of religious martyrdom, again, according to my own faith background, is that there is an ecstasy about giving yourselves up for a cause, and there’s a sense of when you give yourself to a higher purpose, it’s actually one of the most complete, holistic things you can do, when you throw yourself into a belief that you’re willing to die for.

And so, my initial take on the character was that Nat Turner was happy the day before his death, that he was looking forward to finally meeting his Maker, so to speak, and that he was ready to go. And there was a certain part of that that certainly rang true for me, and I think, even for the actor that was playing Nat Turner in the original production, and a lot of it felt cool and poetic and great, but there was also kind of a problem when it came to how to make that a sustainable thing for an entire evening of theater, because typically, theater deals with conflict, right? Theater deals with how we struggle, and even if the play isn’t necessarily about revealing secrets that weren’t known, and now we’re fighting about it, and now we’re yelling over dinner and throwing food, like all plays don’t do that, but there does have to be some type of conflict that the characters are struggling with, and so, I was struggling to find, well, what is Nat Turner’s conflict? He’s happy to die, he’s gonna die tomorrow, sounds good, you know? Not a whole lot of room to move from there.

So that was a problem, and over the course of the development process, and then, when we got into rehearsals for the play, through conversations with Megan Sandberg-Zakian as my director, and through conversations with some of the cast and dramaturges and people, one of the things that came up was the idea that people of faith also experience immense doubt, that having faith doesn’t mean that you never doubt it, and in fact, having faith sometimes mean you experience intense, intense doubt, and so, I asked myself, “Well, what if Nat Turner, on the night “before his execution, was experiencing doubt?” Because that would be, of all things, the worst possible thing for Nat Turner to face. One sort of rule of thumb, if you’re writing a play, tends to be to at least, as a thought experiment, explore what’s the worst possible thing that could happen to your character, right? And it could go very literal, with then, say, “Well, if the character died or got tortured, “that would be bad.” Yes, true.

But specifically, for your character, what’s the worst possible thing that could happen to them in this moment, and for Nat Turner, he knows he’s gonna die, he’s expecting to die, and so, the worst thing that could happen is if it was all for nothing, right? The worst thing that could happen is if he actually didn’t believe in the thing that made him arise up in the first place. And so, that caused me to change direction a little bit, well, not a little bit, a lot, but it changed the beginning of the play, to where Nat Turner is beginning by, experiences this moment of doubt, and appealing to God for some kind of sign that he’s not totally wrong. And then, when Thomas Gray comes into the picture, Nat Turner sort of uses Thomas Gray as a way to exercise his faith, and a way to make himself, again, believe in his cause, and it also gives Nat Turner somebody to sort of work on, right? If you’re alone, by yourself, there’s not a whole lot you can do, but now, there’s a person, and maybe there’s a way that he can continue to prove his faith and to act as this instrument of God that he believes he is. So that was very helpful, experiencing, for myself, my own doubt about if the play’s gonna work, and then, finding a way to, even if the play is a quieter, more mellow type of play than you might expect for a play about rebellion and insurrection, it’s still a play that wrestles with a very essential conflict. And that felt important to do.

One of the interesting things that came up in the process of putting the play on was that I believe opening night of the play was the same night as the first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and I remember getting a phone call from a reporter for a major news publication, and they asked me what it meant to me to have that happening, to have the play happening at the same time as this moment was happening in our country, and as we know, the thought of our country experienced a huge shift with that presidential election, and the play actually happened before the election happened, or the first production did, but already, there was this sort of intensity, right, about what was going on, and they were asking me to comment on that, and I really couldn’t come up with a good quote for them. I had a hard time, and what I ended up saying, I don’t remember what I actually said, because I probably just blabbed for a while, and then was like, ugh. But the essential point I was trying to make, which I think I did make was that, you know, this conversation the play’s having is actually not a political conversation, in the same way that we think of politics. And that’s not to say that politics is unimportant, or that political conversations are not important, or that we should ignore what’s happening in the world at all. But that it occurred to me that this play is an invitation to look at division in this country, and for that matter, in the world, in a different framework.

It wasn’t really, to me, to put it into the context of okay, well, how does it relate to the debates, was actually, and this might feel like hubris, it was actually cheapening the play, in a certain way. Most works of art, and I say this to you, as fellow artists, you know, you have your inclinations, the things you want to say, the things you believe, your visions for what you want to make, and you have an opportunity to create a world in which those things manifest themselves, and for people to experience them, right? And oftentimes, as artists, we are asked to take that work, and to put it into a context that it was not made for, and to put it up against something, some other type of debate or conflict. Now there are some people who are inspired by politics, and want to write about them, and that’s also an okay endeavor to do, if that’s what you feel moved to do. It’s totally fine, but I knew that this was not what this play was born from, and so it was hard for me to not give a good quote, but I also felt like, well, this is the truth, as I see it for this work, and then, they didn’t actually run the story at all, right?

Because it wasn’t really a good story for that medium, and I think what that leads me to, and with this, I think we’ll open it up to questions, is, is a question about what is the purpose of creating theater, of creating a work of art, what is the purpose of putting a dramatic story on stage for people to experience in real time? And for myself, I look at it as an opportunity to create a conversation that might not otherwise happen, as an opportunity to disappear into a world that otherwise would not have had access to, and hopefully, through that experience, you have had your mind and your heart opened to something that you may have not previously been. But I’m interested in what you think about that, and what questions and comments and thoughts you have about your own journeys with your own art making. So with that, thank you for listening. I’d like to open it up to questions. Yes? [audience laughing]

– Audience Member: Ah, thanks. What was it about Nat Turner that inspired you, as opposed other abolitionist leaders of the time, such as Frederick Douglass or people like them?

– The question was, what was it about Nat Turner that inspired me, as opposed to other abolitionist leaders of the time, as opposed to, such as Frederick Douglass, other folks like that? I think, primarily, it was the confession document. It was the heightened language of it, and that was also just part of the writing of the time. Things were written in a sort of heightened, flowery language, but there seemed to me to be some kind of power behind the words, which I took, again, as an indication there was some kind of significant interaction between Nat Turner and Thomas Gray, and again, Nat Turner certainly could be and should be considered an abolitionist, because the purpose of his uprising was to free himself and his community from slavery, but he didn’t publish abolitionist papers, he didn’t talk about, at least as far we know, you know, he didn’t have the opportunity to do that, right? However, he was approaching it almost purely from this spiritual, mystical perspective, which I found fascinating, because when we’re talking about any issue, whether it’s an issue now or an issue of the past, and of course, all of those things are linked together. You know, racism hasn’t gone away simply because slavery has, right?

But what we get to is what is the actual essence of the issue? And for Nat Turner, he looked at it as a spiritual issue. He, his framework, his paradigm was this is what I’m, this is what I’m seeing in the Bible, which was his holy book that he had access to, and this is what I’m seeing in the world, and they don’t match. So I thought that was fascinating. Up there, and then down there?

– Audience Member: What was the most difficult part about just kind of adapting a story from history, into a play well, telling a compelling story?

– The question was, what was the most difficult part of, wait, you gotta help me out, telling the story from history?

– Audience Member: Just kind of applying historical aspects to it, while continuing to tell a compelling story?

– Applying historical aspects while continuing to tell a compelling story? Gotcha. Yeah, it’s hard, the reason it’s hard is because sometimes, when you do a lot of research into something, you don’t really wanna write about it anymore. [audience laughing] At least, I sometimes have that happen. In this case, it helps because when I did the first draft of the play, and this rarely happens in theater, but I did the first draft of the play in March of 2016, and the theater committed to producing it like a couple weeks later, in the next fall. So I didn’t have much time until the play was being produced, so I had no choice but to write it, and the fear of having it be terrible was a great motivator. [laughing] [audience laughing] And also the excitement, oh, this is my opportunity to share a story with the world, right? I mean, it’s not only about the fear, but so that helped me, in that instance, but it can be hard, because when you’re studying history, and facts, again, who knows what they’re gonna lead, what path they’re gonna lead you on, and sometimes, you feel responsible, as you should, for imparting what you know, right? I mean, once you learn about history, and you know that other people don’t know about this history, you think, “Well, “if I’m representing this story, it’s my job “to make sure that people know after they see it, right?” So there’s that burden, which isn’t always helpful.

I think, in the production that we did at New York Theatre Workshop, we ended up putting a thing in the brochure, in the program, describing Nat Turner’s rebellion, which I realized I didn’t ever tell you about the actual rebellion of Nat Turner. Well, yeah, I told you a little bit, but we described the basic facts of it, as we knew them, just to get that out of the way, so people at least had that context, when they were watching the play. But yeah, it’s not an easy question. I think it’s mostly about finding for yourself a point of honesty, where you know that you have a personal feeling about this story, because no matter what you write, this is an expression of your interaction with the history that is gonna manifest on stage, right? And that’s actually the reason people are there, is to see, how do you feel about it, you know? Not simply what happened. Because if they wanna know just what happened, there’s books, you know? There’s scholarship, there are means for people to find out the information, the historical information. And so, they’re at the theater, because they wanna know how you feel about it, and what your artistic expression of those feelings is.

– Audience Member: Could you talk a little bit about your relationship with the New York Theatre Workshop and what influence the director had on your work?

– The question was my relationship with the New York Theatre Workshop, and influence the director had on the work? Great, yes, that’s a good question. So New York Theatre Workshop is the place where the show originated. I was actually doing a fellowship there, called the 2050 Fellowship, at the time I wrote the script for Nat Turner, and I wrote the script there because I was not afraid to fail there, because the whole way that the fellowship was set up was that you could work on something, have a sort of gentle conversation with peers and with their staff about it. It was presented as being an opportunity to explore art in a very pure way, which is hard to do in New York, because of the atmosphere is very, you know, it’s intense, and everything is looked at differently, ’cause it’s professional, the critical aspect is always present, it’s very competitive, and this is a great thing.

I mean, it also brings out a lot of great work, but it’s great to have, also, a space, where you can kinda remind yourself, “Oh yeah, “I’m an artist, I wanna just explore being an artist here. ” So when I was at, doing the fellowship, I had this concept for writing a play about Nat Turner, and I thought this play might not work at all. It might be terrible, it might not be a play, I’d never written a play about historical events before, so I thought, “This is a great place that I can try “and fail, if necessary,” right? Of course, the irony is that they, then, produced it, very quickly, but I think I probably never would’ve written the script I had if I had been having that pressure from the beginning. But my director for the world premiere was Megan Sandberg-Zakian, who I’d worked with previously on a production of a different play, and Megan and I really see eye-to-eye in a lot of ways, and she was somebody that I knew I could just talk to about my process and what the concept was, and I had a conversation with her about the play before I even wrote the play, which I don’t normally do with a lot of people, but for Megan, it made sense. I sent her a draft of the play that was actually a pre-draft one, and we had a conversation about it, and that draft ended up becoming sort of fertilizer for the future draft.

And then, she did the workshop, and then, the theater brought her on to direct the production. And she was, her and I really were working in tandem in a lot of ways. Probably the thing that made me appreciate her collaboration the most was there was a point during previews, so at a lot of off-Broadway theaters, the previews of the play, you know, full production with audience cost a little bit less, and you’re still in rehearsal, right? So you’re still developing the play, and the previews were happening, I was doing a lot of rewrites, and a couple of things. One is that she told me, “You know, we have five rehearsals left, “and we have five scenes of the play, “so you gotta stop rewriting at some point. ” Like she made a lot of space for me to keep writing and wanted me to have as much space as possible, but she finally said, “You know, this actually your limit, “so just know that,” and I probably did my most productive writing that night after that conversation.

And then, there was a point in which I gave her some pages, and she called me, she said, “You know, I hate to tell you this, “but I feel like this writing is not you. “It feels like notes. ” And I was really thankful for that, because quite literally, I had been thinking, mulling over some notes about a change, and I was writing kind of reactively, right, in a very kind of reactionary way, trying to fix it, and the writing was bad. It just wasn’t the play, and she recognized that. And so, you know, and those conversations, again, it was an ongoing collaboration. It’s hard to parse out exactly what the effect was. I think her, she was the one who brought up to me a lot of the conversation about the question of doubt and faith, like that was a conversation that we had. So it was a very fruitful collaboration, and the New York Theatre Workshop gave us the platform and the space to do it, you know, and just let it happen. That was really great. Follow up question? – Audience Member: I was just wondering, could you talk about the voyage, kinda, around the William Styron novel? – Oh, the William Styron novel.

Right, so there is a novel called The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron, which I believe, won the Pulitzer Prize, right? – Audience Member: Yes.
– I think so.
– Yes, it is.
– Yes, it did.
– Yes, I’m getting a yes. Yeah, I never read that novel, I mean, I never really talked about.
– Oh.
– And I knew it existed, and I, yeah, I didn’t feel, at the time, I certainly, there might’ve been a time when it would’ve been useful for me to read it, or I would’ve been curious enough to read it, but in the process of making the play, I was like, “This is not the time,” [chuckling] to have someone else’s interpretation of Nat Turner in my head. Even, there was the Nate Parker movie that came out that same year, [coughing] about Nat Turner, but I also just didn’t see it and watch it. I felt like it was important for me to approach the story on my own terms without having to, there was already the task of having to meet the story where it was and dealing with the history of it, and then, to add that to being in conversation with somebody else’s interpretation, I felt like it might make it hard for me to be productive. Yes?

– Audience Member: Are you currently working on something new, and what is the subject matter of your new work?

– [clearing throat] The question was, if I’m working on something new, and what is the subject matter? Yes, I’m working on a few new plays. One of them is actually is about Black Wall Street, which is a neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma, called Greenwood, that was destroyed in the race riot, and I’m currently rewriting that project. It’s hard. I think, in this case, the research that I did was very compelling, and because there wasn’t a production right on the horizon, more challenging, in some ways, for me not to get stuck, so I’m working my way through that, and I’m working on a project called The Refuge Plays, that’s gonna happen at the McCarter Theatre in 2020, and that’s more of a family drama comedy-ish epic. It’s long, it’s gonna be like five hours, but they, thankfully, the theater is okay with that, which I don’t take for granted at all, but that project’s been in development for about four years, and I’m looking forward to that happening. I’ve done some television writing in the meantime, other things to sort of pay the bills. So there’s a lot going on. I’m very thankful to have a lot of projects happening, but I’m also feeling very spread thin, which can be the sort of, I guess, double-edged sword of taking on projects and commissions, taking on commissions from theaters can also be wonderful, but I think, also important to be careful with how many you take and when you take them, if you’re offered them, because there’s pros and cons to entering into that kind of a process. Yes?

– Audience Member: Are a lot of lines from the play taken directly from the confession?

– The question was, are a lot of lines of the play taken directly from the confession? Yeah, there are a few, and some that are not directly, exactly the confession, but the essential thought is taken pretty directly. I highly recommend reading the confession, by the way. It’s on, it’s part of the public record, you can download it from the internet. It’s just called Confessions of Nat Turner by T. R. Gray, and you know, it’s a fascinating read. Up there, yes?

– Audience Member: Do you have the intentions that the audience can potentially explain that away similarly?

– Okay, yeah, so the question is, is it to validate Nat’s faith, or is the intention for the audience to be able to explain it away? That’s a great question. I think, I hope that it could be different, depending on your perspective. It’s– They happen in a way that, I believe, you could make either interpretation, that this really happened, or this didn’t happen, and I think that’s really, a lot of times, where, what we’re led to, when we’re considering mystical phenomenon or religious phenomenon, or miracles. You know, if you witness a miracle, if a miracle happens, it can be proof of your faith, for you, if it happened to you, right? But it doesn’t necessarily prove to somebody else, that they didn’t experience it, or if they did, they might’ve seen it in a different way. So I look at miracles in that way, that I’ve certainly seen and experienced miraculous things in my life, but I don’t look at that as because I experienced this, you have to believe it. It’s more, this is how I interpret these events, and I think that, hopefully, the play opens the door for you to see it, in whatever way is useful for you to see it. Yeah. Up there, and then down here.

– Audience Member: How often did you use your Bible when writing?

– How often did I use my Bible in writing? Not a ton, not a ton. I mean, I’m not Christian, you know, so I’ve read the Bible, and I don’t, I’m not, I consider the Bible a holy text, and I certainly referred to some of the passages that Nat Turner refers to, but also, there is some passages, there are some things that Nat Turner says that aren’t in the Bible, that he takes as his own revelation, you know what I’m saying, or his own interpretation of the Bible, that he’s then passing on, and so, there were some moments where we had to look and say, “Hey, is this in the Bible?” And we found out, oh, no, it’s not. This is him reading the Bible, and then seeing this, and then putting two and two together, and so, it was interesting to kinda go on that journey. Down here?

– Audience Member: How do you feel personally about your play, your work of art possibly being some of the audience members’ first exposure to the story of Nat Turner?

– Yes, the question was, how do I feel about the play being some audience members’ first exposure to Nat Turner? That’s a good question. Oh, man. [audience laughing] I don’t know. [audience laughing] I don’t know. Hey, I don’t, weirdly, I don’t think about it a lot. You know? That’s kinda cool that it might be, for some people. That’s actually great. I think more, it’s like, I wrote the story ’cause of what the story meant to me, and sharing it, and yeah, I don’t know how it might affect people’s understanding of Nat Turner. Hopefully, if anything, it would encourage people to want to know more. But thanks for bringing that up. Yes?

– Audience Member: Related to that, Nathan, how many productions of it have you seen?

– Oh, the question was, how many productions of Nat Turner have I seen? This is the third. So I saw the one at New York Theatre Workshop, I saw one in D. C. at Forum Theatre, in 20, I guess it was 2018. We have a few more minutes, if there’s more questions. Yes?

– Audience Member: Why did you choose to set up the script in a prose/poetry format?

– Okay, the question was, why did I choose to set up the script in a prose/poetry format? By which you mean there are some parts that are, have kind of broken up verse type of lines, right. I don’t know. [audience laughing] It’s a really good question. It felt right, it felt right initially. I think that, oftentimes, I’m writing a play, the way that it looks on the page, aesthetically, does matter to me, and I think it affects the way that people who are gonna do the play approach it. Oftentimes, if you break up lines, like I’m not, when you break a couple lines into, when you essentially add verse lines to a text, and you write it as poetry, the risk is that people will get really precious with it, and overindulge in the poetry of it, and just start saying things like they’re beautiful words, which did not happen in this production, by the way. [audience laughing] Well done. [audience laughing] But if you’re reading it as an actor, usually, you’re able to find the reasons why they’re broken up. It’s often about the thought, right? It’s about, maybe there’s not a pause at the end of the line, ’cause there’s no punctuation, but it’s broken up, because there’s sort of two thoughts that are little bit separate, and usually, the proof is in hearing it. So if I hear actors speaking it in a way that feels right, and that they seem to be engaged and inspired and able to lend their own artistic voice to it, while still getting the essential meaning and point across, I know that it’s at least in the ballpark. And I will, sometimes, switch using, you know, editing it and cutting and pasting and moving it around, but essentially, that’s, I’m not sure that answers the question, but that’s kinda the way that I approached it.

– Audience Member: The play be performed on a predominantly white campus?

– The question was, does it mean anything to me to have the play performed on a predominantly white campus? Yeah, I mean, I don’t know, yes, I don’t know. I don’t really know how to– I feel like the play, I know that, in the theater in general, the so-called professional theater, theater that is primarily done through theater institutions that are sponsored by donors and by government, et cetera, tends to be relatively white, in terms of the audience, and in terms of donors, so that’s not abnormal. And I think, really, it brings up a lot of questions that we could have a whole lecture on it, actually, but I think ultimately, I wrote the play for people who wanna listen, you know? I don’t think that, and I’m sure that an audience at an HSBCU, for example, would be, sorry, HBCU would be a different audience than the audience here, certainly, right? I don’t know exactly how that would change the play, but an audience is a part of it, and primarily, the play, I think, speaks to people who understand English, right? And then, how they respond to it will certainly be filtered through their cultural understanding and their own history, but I can’t be in charge of that, you know? – Merlaine: I think that’s our time. – I think that’s our time, thank you so much. [audience applauding] But thanks for bringing that up.