Talking With... Sarah Treem

Playwright of THE HOW AND THE WHY

Conducted by Kittson O'Neill, InterAct's Artistic Associate

InterAct: THE HOW AND THE WHY has a strong central conflict between professional women of two different generations. The personal vs. the professional is still hotly debated by both generations, even if the terms of the debate are constantly changing. Why is this such an intractable issue? Have you dealt with it in your own career as a writer?

Sarah Treem: I'm not quite sure what this question is asking, but I think it's about career vs. family life and which should take priority in a person's life? In THE HOW AND THE WHY, Zelda and Rachel are debating these questions because they are both incredibly ambitious in their professional lives and have recognized the sacrifices required to master one's passion. In that way, their confusion mirrors my own. Because writing, like science, like anything, takes a lot of work to get really good at. And there are only so many hours in the day. So that's time away from family, friends and children. And that doesn't always feel like the right choice. When I die, will I want to look back on a richly populated life or an extensive body of work? Some days I'm inclined in one direction, some days, the other. (I know the choice isn't actually that black and white, but I'm a dramatist and I enjoy a good dialectic.)

InterAct:  Why do you think these theories about human evolution have such strong emotional impact? Have your feelings about the intersection of science and politics evolved as you worked on this play?

Sarah Treem: That’s a really good question. Evolutionary Biology is fascinating to me, because it’s storytelling. Evolutionary Biologists look at scientific history and construct narratives about what might have happened to land the human species where it is today. So, in that way, I think theories of evolution speak to us from a very emotional place. They’re a little like myths. They explain us to ourselves. Through my work on this play, I developed a real appreciation for how personal science actually is. I think we have a tendency, in the arts, to think we live these intensely creative, deeply significant lives where we cannot separate our work from ourselves because we are Artists with a capital 'A.' But the truth is, anyone who is passionate about their work feels inextricably linked to it.

InterAct:  When you began working on the play did you start with the personal conflict between mother and daughter or the clash of scientific theories?

Sarah Treem: Both. Though one perhaps more consciously than the other. I had read a book about female physiology and there were these two (real) theories buried within it. I can’t really remember how I started the play, but I wanted to include those two theories and talk about the generational conflict between older and younger professional women. I had just had an experience where I felt betrayed by an older colleague, so that was definitely part of the inspiration. I started messing around with a conversation between these two female scientists. I honestly didn’t know where it was going to go.

InterAct: How much research did you do to write the play?

Sarah Treem: A lot. For about a year there all I could talk about was menopause or menstruation. I find them both endlessly fascinating phenomena.

InterAct:  How much of the science in the play is real? Did you have to fudge anything for dramatic purposes?

Sarah Treem: Oh no. It's all real. No fudging. I mean, the characters aren't real, and the time period in which Zelda created the Grandmother Hypothesis is fabricated, but the science itself is true. During the premiere at the McCarter, we had a few Princeton faculty scientists working with us, who were kind enough to review the science and verify it, so I feel pretty confident.

InterAct:  In a previous interview you said this play is inspired by “Woman: An Intimate Geography,” by Natalie Angier. What about the book sparked your imagination?

Sarah Treem: The whole book is just really, really wonderful and totally eye-opening. She takes you through every element of female physiology, from our brains to our breasts to our muscles and our nervous systems. She talks about how our bodies have evolved differently from mens’. And why. I learned so much from reading that book that I never learned in all the human biology courses I took during high school and college. It blows my mind now, because when I think back on my education, I’m pretty sure the pedagogical implication was that men and women shared a physiology. Angier shows her readers just how radically different female bodies actually are.

InterAct:  Is any of the play biographical?

Sarah Treem: Isn’t everything? Yes, very much. I’ve personally been wrestling with issues of ambition and achievement and gender and love and domesticity for most of my twenties. I remember, when I started THE HOW AND THE WHY, I was really asking myself what it meant to be the daughters of the feminists. Because, at the time, I personally felt confused and the older women I turned to seemed even more confused then I was.

InterAct:  Do you feel your previous plays have informed this one? Is there a theme or a central issue in your work?

Sarah Treem: Um yes, I think I’ve had a sort of one-tracked mind for the last five years. I was really trying to work something out for myself about gender relationships, power dynamics, mother-daughter interplay and feminism. I’ve written four plays that I consider in this thematic tradition. I finished the last one this summer and I thought to myself ‘I’m done now. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.’ Those might be famous last words, but I do think that sometimes writers get obsessed with a certain paradox and it becomes their central dramatic question, the engine that drives their work for a while… until they exhaust themselves by thinking about it and then they move on.

InterAct:  You also have a very successful career writing for Television. Do you approach a stage play differently? How do you know if a piece is best suited to stage or screen?

Sarah Treem: I do have a great television career but I still sort of consider it my day job. When I write for TV, I’m usually working off someone else’s ideas. A book that a production company has brought to me, for example, that they think might make a great TV show. When I have an anxiety within me, that has condensed into some sort of existential crisis and is bubbling within my soul, it’s coming out as a play or it isn’t coming out at all.

InterAct:  What do you hope audiences will take with them from THE HOW AND THE WHY?

Sarah Treem: One of the greatest compliments I’ve ever gotten on that script, is when an audience member has said “I’ve never seen female characters like this on stage before.” Sometimes people seem surprised to see two women discussing things like science in such depth in theater. I wish it wasn’t that way. I guess I’m hoping that the audience will see what I saw while I was writing this play – that the choices we make in our lives are never simple, never easy – and the narratives we tell ourselves (and our children) are never completely true. But, perhaps, like Zelda says in the play, there’s a real beauty, a true satisfaction, in the way next generation rewrites the story of the previous one.

InterAct: Thanks for talking with us.

THE 2011/2012 SEASON

Introduction

The How And The Why

Make a Purchase

About The Play

The Playwright

Playwright Interview

Special Performances

Calendar

Microcrisis

Outside The Frame

Etched In Skin On A Sunlit Night

Make a Tax-Deductible Donation to InterAct Safely & Conveniently Online