Playwright Spotlight: Rick Bingen

An interview with Rick Bingen, written and conducted by Kith & Kin board officer Selena Milewski.

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A hard-hitting look at the traumas, dramas, and epiphanies of the world backstage, Rick Bingen’s This Is a Staged Reading is a theatre-person’s theatre. Relatable characters interact with one another as they prepare for a fictitious show, and periodically turn to the audience to share their inmost thoughts and musings about what’s going on. Like a mirror directed into another mirror, this clever and affecting script leaves audiences with the sense they’ve both peeked behind the curtain at something they were never meant to see, and been cut in on a secret as obvious as daylight once it’s told.

MILEWSKI:

Your website states that your “original plays blend heart, humor, imagination, and theatricality.” This Is a Staged Reading certainly fits the bill. On the subject of theatricality, tell us more about how theatre itself can make a good topic for theatre?

BINGEN:

My favorite part of any play, whether I’m writing or watching, is the relationships between the characters. Theatre lets us witness intimate conversations that would normally happen behind closed doors, and that makes theatre itself a particularly rich subject for a play. The artists working on a show become close very quickly: they share their vulnerabilities, depend on one another, and are often changed by the story they’re telling together. These relationships and transformations are natural subjects for a play.

MILEWSKI:

In This Is a Staged Reading, you’ve created a cast of characters whose only necessary demographic casting features relate to age. What are some of the advantages and challenges of working in this vein as a playwright?

BINGEN:

The biggest advantage for me is seeing what others bring to the story. By not giving the characters specific demographic identities beyond age, readers, actors, and audience members have more room to see themselves in different characters and connect their own experiences to the story. The biggest challenge is making sure the characters still feel specific and fully realized while leaving enough openness for those different interpretations.

MILEWSKI:

The director character in your play, Kris, notes how a traumatic experience in their early acting career turned them away from that part of the artform, but immediately shares that they “couldn’t leave the theatre” and thus turned to directing. What is it, do you think, that keeps people invested in making theatre even after they’ve experienced significant ordeals or setbacks?

BINGEN:

Theatre is deeply human. Not every relationship we have works out, and yet we continue to yearn for connection. The same is true in theatre: the relationships we form can change us forever, and the experience of creating something together can be incredibly powerful. I think that possibility, the chance to feel that sense of connection again, is often worth risking the setbacks.

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A segment of This Is a Staged Reading will be presented during K&K New Plays, which runs October 2nd - 4th at Inspiration Studios in West Allis. Secure your tickets here.