By Matt McDermott

Idris Goodwin (http://www.idrisgoodwin.com) has written, produced and directed over a dozen plays in such Chicago venues as The Cultural Center, Athenaeum Theater, The Museum of Contemporary Art and Prop Thtr. In 2004 he was awarded a NEA/TCG Playwright in Residence grant to explore hip-hop aesthetics with Free Street Programs. His play BRAISING was selected in the 2005 National New Plays Showcase at Stanford University and received a world premiere production by Tricklock Theater Company in Albuquerque, NM in February 2006.

Idris has been a guest lecturer, performer and writing workshop facilitator at institutions like Young Chicago Authors, School of the Art Institute, DePaul University, Columbia College Chicago and nationally at Yale, the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Sarah Lawrence College and the University of New Mexico.

As part of the Rhinoceros Theater Festival 2007 http://curioustheatrebranch.com/rhinofest/index.htm, his Danger Face Trilogy is being presented by Hermit Arts at PROP THTR.

What motivated you to become a dramatist?

Living in the suburbs of Detroit. The lack of energy, culture and excitement provided me with a lot of time and space to explore my imagination. I started writing and drawing comic books, then moved on to short stories, then screenplays, then stage plays when I realized that I could both write and actualize my work via the fringe and storefront opportunities that Prop Thtr and Curious Theater Branch offered me in 2001.

For Rhino Fest 2007, you have written a trilogy, Danger Face Trilogy. What challenges and opportunities did this ambitious format present you?

To be quite honest the Danger Face plays were the easiest pieces of writing for me. I am influenced by television programs, popular music, news magazines - basically short form mediums. Condensed ideas and stories. I try not to think too much about the plays. I just figure out where I want to put Jack and Wayne (the two main characters of Danger Face) and try to top what I did previously. I have fun with them. Knowing the actors I am writing for and the limitations of the storefront, guerilla theater medium helps me be swift and decisive in my choices. Also, the Hermit Arts team is highly creative and collaborative so I know things will change once we bring it to life. The challenges of staging a trilogy of plays can be summed up in the following questions which Hermit Arts asked itself initially:

• How do we effectively stage and present three one act plays over the course of 8 weeks?

• Do we do Danger Face 1 on Thursdays, 2 on Fridays and 3 on Saturdays or Danger Face 1 for two weeks, 2 for two weeks and 3 for three weeks, or do we do....etc., etc.?
• How do we rehearse? Where do we rehearse?
• Who will do what, when and to what degree?
• How much time can you take off from work? Will your significant other leave you because you're always at rehearsal?
• When the hell are you gonna write Danger Face 3?

What are the themes you are exploring in Danger Face Trilogy? Do they represent continued thematic interests or more of a break into new territory?

Danger Face is rooted the genre of noir or crime fiction. Noir is a genre of human tragedy and comedy rooted in the seedier aspects of life. It turns the lenses on what happens in the shadows as opposoed to the sun. It's also about redemption. The archetypal noir character is one who has made mistakes in the past and is in some way deformed either physically (scarred unshaven faces, bullet wounds and alcoholism) or emotionally (nightmares, icy cold cynicism) but are given an unlikely chance to redeem him or herself by typically protecting someone or something representing innocence. By that protection, the noir character must try and make better choices than they made in the past - many times after they make the right choice, they die. If they do survive they come out of the situation only slightly changed - ultimately the archetypal noir character has gone too far down the descent to completely return to the "day" world. They continue battling the darker aspects of human nature including their own.

All of my plays, whether they be noir or not, deal with human interaction and comedy, entendre and contradiction, the bittersweet, the moments of calm after storms. Life as a series of collisons and healings. Danger Face is a celebration and condemnation of human behavior.

You are also a Hip Hop musical performer and in the past have cited this as having a strong influence on your writing. Is Hip Hop influential on the Danger Face Trilogy too?

Well, sadly no one break dances in Danger Face 1, 2 or 3. However, since I am hip hop to my core, everything I do is influenced by it. Allow me to expand. Hip Hop is a culture of contradiction, and subversion - authenticity and exaggeration, restraint and explosion, knowledge and ignorance. It's a culture built upon artistic expression by any available means and medium. It's about finding one's own individual beat, rhythm, swagger and style built from that of others. It's a culture of collage. That being said, Danger Face is my theatrical mix tape in the sense that it's a conscious soup of my literary and film influences: Ernest Hemmingway's "The Killers," the western film "Rio Bravo," Abbott and Costello and the Three Stooges shorts, Walter Mosely, Elmore Leonard, The Coen Brothers, David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino. To create Danger Face I sampled and layered themes and scenarios from my literary/film heroes and sprinkled them with my own warped interest in human sadness and comedy.

Can the three plays in the trilogy be presented on their own? If not seen as a trilogy, what would you feel would be lost?

Danger Face 1 was presented in 2004. At that point we (Hermit Arts) just wanted to do a fun show. We didn't imagine any further stories. So we put it on in Jinx Cafe. After one of the shows a young writer/performer that I knew form the Young Chicago Authors writing community said, "I never seen nothing like that before. You should do a trilogy." Hermit Arts had always talked about doing a serial play, but at that point we still hadn't connected the dots. A year later we staged Danger Face: The Slow Burn (the second installment). After that show Beau O'Reilly, curator of the Rhino Fest, said: “Why don't you come back to Rhino next year and do the whole trilogy?” Then it made sense. But similar to that of a Three Stooges or Abbott and Costello short, each piece has similar scenarios and themes, and Jack and Wayne as characters, but the installments weren’t intended to connect directly. However, having written and staged two of Danger Face plays, while writing the third play I discovered the emergence of a continuous storyline. Perhaps I’ll follow this storyline into a fourth installment.

Have you found Chicago a good location for a dramatist? What are your future plans for writing and presenting future work here?

Because Chicago is in the Midwest we have that up-with-the-rooster-down-with-the-sun work-hard play-hard ethos. Chicago has a lot of spaces to make work and a lot of good actors who want to work hard. Chicago also has a variety of diverse arts communities that often converge and sometimes participate in our productions. It has a lot of open minded people that want to see affordable theater that speaks to their modern sensibilities.

Audiences are always a challenge, but we have a very loyal group of followers that know and respect the work that Hermit Arts creates. Many of our followers don't see any theater other than ours. Though I don't see myself living in Chicago forever, I will always work with Hermit Arts and others to present work here. I owe much of my artistic discovery and success to this town.