INTERVIEW: Tawni O’Dell on her journey from page to stage with ‘Pay the Writer’
Photo: From left, Bryan Batt and Ron Canada star in Tawni O’Dell’s Pay the Writer. Photo courtesy of Jeremy Daniel / Provided by The Press Room with permission.
Although Tawni O’Dell’s first foray into the theatrical arts has nothing directly to do with the ongoing writers’ and actors’ strikes that are impacting Hollywood, one can find a symbolic connection in the name of her new play: Pay the Writer. In fact, the producers even leaned into this connection by hosting a benefit performance for the Writers Guild of America.
The show, O’Dell’s first for the stage, is currently running at the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theater at the Pershing Square Signature Center in New York City. The impressive cast includes Ron Canada, Marcia Cross and Bryan Batt.
O’Dell is a successful novelist, known for such books as Angels Burning, One of Us and Back Roads (this last one was part of Oprah’s Book Club). This current venture into the off-Broadway scene has been exciting, thrilling and a bit nerve-wracking. “I was just at a performance last night,” O’Dell said in a recent phone interview. “It was our first night with some critics — very, very nerve-wracking. This is my first play, so I’m coming to this late in life. The nerves, they’re very hard to control.”
Although the nerves were present, O’Dell remains confident in the hard-working cast and crew, headed by director Karen Carpenter. Together they are telling the story of Bruston Fischer (Batt), a literary agent trying to make a name for himself in the publishing world, but he’s also someone who faces discrimination for being gay. One of his clients is Cyrus Holt (Canada), a talented writer who is destined for success, but, as a Black man, also faces marginalization throughout his career. They team up to become friends and business associates, recognizing the many battles they’ll need to win to find success.
“I’m so thrilled with our cast and our crew,” O’Dell said. “We have a fantastic director in Karen Carpenter. It’s so thrilling to see my play, to see my characters come to life. I come from a novelist background, so this is all new to me. And also to hear the audience, that’s something you never get as a novelist. You never get feedback from your audience, other than someone coming up to you and saying, ‘Hey, I liked your book.’ It’s so invigorating, but it was nerve-wracking last night because it was the first time that critics might have been there. I was like, oh no, oh no, if anything goes wrong, but nothing went wrong. So it was fine.”
Click here for Hollywood Soapbox’s previous interview with Tawni O’Dell.
O’Dell transitioned from the world of novels to the world of plays thanks to producer Mitchell Maxwell, who is known for Dinner With Friends, Jeffrey and Damn Yankees. The two met several years ago, at a time when O’Dell was having some writer’s block. “I was really not able to write a novel,” she said. “I couldn’t focus. It was the first time my personal life kind of overwhelmed my creative life, and I was very frustrated. And I had told him about this idea that I was going to write as a novel, and he said, ‘Well, look, you have such problems with novels, why don’t you write a play?’ I said, ‘That’s ridiculous. I don’t know anything about the theater.’ I feel that people in theater … [have] been involved since they were in high school. It’s in their blood. They’ve been to so many performances of so many shows, so I felt it was sort of like a special club. And I did not have the password to get in there.”
Maxwell convinced her to try, and, after all, he is a producer who could open up some doors. The deal was if O’Dell wrote a compelling play, one that Maxwell liked, then he’d join the producing team.
“It’s one of those overnight successes that took six years, but he really encouraged me to write the play,” the new playwright said. “He read the first draft. It’s changed dramatically since then. He was like, ‘This is great. This is wonderful. Keep going with it.’ It was his encouragement. I would have never written a play if I had not met someone who was in the theater business who encouraged me to write a play. It would not have occurred to me. That’s how it came about.”
O’Dell’s story explores the business partnership and friendship between Bruston and Cyrus. There are complications that arise, and the audience is able to view how relationships can build and fall apart. For O’Dell, she wasn’t trying to make any statements about the issues that are involved in the narrative. Instead, she wanted to build authentic characters who laughed and struggled, who rose to success despite difficult circumstances.
“Bruston, the agent, takes care of Cyrus, the artist, and I guess one of the main points of the play is the difficulties in being an artist and also how artists treat the people that love them and how difficult it is for them to deal with that,” she said. “But it ultimately is about that unconditional love that they have for each other and an artist’s legacy. That’s what it’s about. Yes, these are two men that when they meet … they were both very marginalized to society. One is a Black man; one is a gay man. And that is definitely part of their empathy for each other and a big part of their relationship supporting each other in that, and then we also have Cyrus’ ex-wife, Lana, played by Marcia Cross, who is really, really wonderful in this performance. She’s a white woman. They were an interracial couple, and they too had to overcome a lot when they were younger. They have a very volatile relationship. She’s the mother of her children as well.”
And now O’Dell can take a seat at the Signature Center, where Pay the Writer continues through Sept. 30, and see her characters on stage — a far cry from sitting in a chair and reading a book. “A part of it even now seems surreal to me that this has happened,” O’Dell said. “It came out of the blue this shift in my career at this point in my life, and my mind has been blown by the level of talent that we’ve been able to get.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Pay the Writer by Tawni O’Dell continues through Sept. 30 at the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theater at the Pershing Square Signature Center in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
