Artistic Statement
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D.W. Gregory
Artistic Statement
Theater for me is highly political, but in the most intensely personal way. I shy away from plays that shout “This is an outrage!” Instead, I tell stories of ordinary people trapped in extraordinary circumstances. I allow my audiences to develop an attachment to certain characters, then slap them back with the revelation that their favorite is failing out of fear--a fear they share. And would their choices be any different?
My early work was called impressionistic because many of the plays built on a series of images or encounters that worked on the audience in a cumulative way--the way you would parse a family’s history by sifting through an old album. My most produced play, RADIUM GIRLS, works in precisely this way. In other work I have experimented with familiar forms—the sex comedy, the murder mystery, the psychological thriller--which I subvert through manipulation of expectation. The woman at the center of DIRTY PICTURES has a physical disability--but she is loved and lusted over by the men around her in defiance of cultural expectations and popular definitions of beauty. DESIGN mashes up a murder mystery with a comedy of manners, in which high-strung, spoiled suburbanites second-guess their life choices when they find themselves in the cross-hairs of a serial sniper. Each of these plays is a critique of American culture--its obsession with image and privilege, its fundamental sexism, implicit racism, and violence.
My most recent play, MEMOIRS OF A FORGOTTEN MAN, turns to Stalinist Russia for a parable about America in the age of Trump. Set during Stalin’s Great Purge in the 1930s, it works as both psychological suspense and family drama, in what is ultimately a heartbreaking story of personal betrayal.
But regardless of how serious the subject matter, the plays are always infused with humor.
In my work, tragedy and comedy exist side by side because they exist that way in life. I never to try to separate them, and I have come to trust the sudden intrusion of a sober discovery into a comedic scene. The play is funny until it isn’t--and at that point, larger questions are revealed.
My early work was called impressionistic because many of the plays built on a series of images or encounters that worked on the audience in a cumulative way--the way you would parse a family’s history by sifting through an old album. My most produced play, RADIUM GIRLS, works in precisely this way. In other work I have experimented with familiar forms—the sex comedy, the murder mystery, the psychological thriller--which I subvert through manipulation of expectation. The woman at the center of DIRTY PICTURES has a physical disability--but she is loved and lusted over by the men around her in defiance of cultural expectations and popular definitions of beauty. DESIGN mashes up a murder mystery with a comedy of manners, in which high-strung, spoiled suburbanites second-guess their life choices when they find themselves in the cross-hairs of a serial sniper. Each of these plays is a critique of American culture--its obsession with image and privilege, its fundamental sexism, implicit racism, and violence.
My most recent play, MEMOIRS OF A FORGOTTEN MAN, turns to Stalinist Russia for a parable about America in the age of Trump. Set during Stalin’s Great Purge in the 1930s, it works as both psychological suspense and family drama, in what is ultimately a heartbreaking story of personal betrayal.
But regardless of how serious the subject matter, the plays are always infused with humor.
In my work, tragedy and comedy exist side by side because they exist that way in life. I never to try to separate them, and I have come to trust the sudden intrusion of a sober discovery into a comedic scene. The play is funny until it isn’t--and at that point, larger questions are revealed.