Interview Part Two
MKW: Let’s talk about how we met. ///
JH: Yes, I was trying to remember if you were already at PCS by the 2005 JAW?
MKW: Yes, it was the summer before my senior year of college and I was interning for PCS, and invited to be a part of the festival, but I had to keep a part time job and couldn’t attend the festival as much as I wanted but I do distinctly remember being in the room when Adam [Greenfield] was directing ACT A LADY. And Adam Bock was also at the JAW and was sitting on the couch, and little me unaware of what I was part of, went up to him and started asking him all about himself.
JH: Crazy, yeah it was an amazing year. First of all I should say to the casual reader that I met my husband that way. We sorta knew each other a bit already but he directed my JAW show ACT A LADY—
MKW: Wait, really? I thought you knew each other from Seattle.
JH: I think JAW was our first really realized process together, and we behaved ourselves but there was maybe the first spark of something, and we started dating a few months later when I moved out to do an NEA/TCG residency at The Empty Space, where Adam worked. So JAW was a special time and, as you said, Adam Bock was there and Itamar Moses, who have both overlapped with me over the years in our playwright lives. And Ebbe [Roe Smith] was the fourth playwright and he would later act in ACT A LADY when PCS produced it. So for me it was the beginning of Portland being a playwriting home base, one of several, that allow me to make a living in theater.
MKW: So, we met at JAW and then again when you came out for the production of ACT A LADY and again when PCS workshopped FUTURA, but I would say we really became friends when we were working on FUTURA’s production at PCS.
JH: Right, where we became BFFs alienating everyone with our laughter.
MKW: And MAPLE AND VINE came after FUTURA and is part of the loose trilogy correct?
JH: Yes, it may be a trilogy only in my mind, but if it’s useful then the first play of the trilogy is FUTURA, the second is MAPLE AND VINE and the last one is MARJORIE PRIME. All of the plays are to do with humanity and technology, the ways in which technology makes our lives easier, and the ways it make it more difficult to be human.
