An interview with playwright Cecilia Copeland!

Photo by Jody Christopherson

Danielle Ferrier: You recently had a workshop production at IRT Theater of your new play “R Culture”. How did that go? Where are you hoping to see this project go? What is important about “R Culture”?

Cecilia Copeland: It went really well. We were lucky, because our set designer my long time NYMadness collaborator G. Warren Stiles hand sewed this beautiful big top tent for our show. On a showcase code budget I know that without his meticulous attention to detail and professionalism, his genius really, that we couldn’t have created the same kind of impact for people when they arrived into the space. The show itself was received very well. I’m hoping to take it into a full professional production down the line. I also believe that “R Culture” should be performed on every college campus in the US. 

What’s important about the play is that it’s getting us to look at the various aspects of our culture that create a society where rape is commonplace. If we want to be a society that is less sexually violent we need to look at the factors influencing us, our morals, our pastimes, our hobbies, our values, and our entertainment. What makes “R Culture” unique is that the play isn’t preaching to us, but is instead holding up a fun house mirror exaggerating these elements so we can see them as they truly are… and we’re doing it in a way that uses humor to disarm some of the well-constructed defense mechanisms. 


Danielle Ferrier:As a writer, what is the most difficult part of the process? 

Cecilia Copeland: The hardest part for me is getting started, which involves disconnecting from emails and social media. I run my own theater company, I work a day job, I’m constantly doing submission applications, and I try to look after myself, which means paying attention to what I put in my body and occasionally getting some exercise. That alone can be exhausting, so to then sit down and write can feel more like a chore than communion with something I love. It’s the struggle of actually getting to those first moments opening the file on my computer and typing the first few words that are the worst. Once I’m in the world I’m off and running, but getting there means tuning out the rest of the noise. It didn’t used to be hard to disconnect and focus. I can easily recall a time when I only received ten emails a day and didn’t have any profiles on social media. In those days it was easy for me to make my way to the writing and sit for marathon stretches. I could finish a first draft of a full length in a week no problem. That’s not possible anymore in part because I’m working in theater as an artistic director. I can’t just fall off the map for four days. Now I often put on a “gone writing” sign on my social media pages like an out of office reply just so I can focus. My audiences don’t have the luxury of checking their phone while they’re watching my show… If I’m checking my phone and turning out while I’m writing it’s likely not going to be engaging enough to hold their attention. 


Danielle Ferrier:As a female writer, what is the most difficult part about getting your work produced?

Cecilia Copeland: I think the biggest hurdle female writers have is subject matter. I think if you’re an “issue” writer taking on an event in history or historical figure, or if you’re writing about something that is a big headline it’s easier to get your work produced. For centuries the providence of women has not been the public sphere of historical events but the private one. Given that the private sphere was assigned to women it was historically devalued, which is ridiculous. What is more important than how we experience our intimate daily lives and the socioeconomics of that system? What is more valuable that the matters pertaining to our hearts and souls? Yet, a woman playwright who is writing about those matters from a female perspective is somehow not seen as a universal story, but yet Hamlet is a universal story? I feel what happened to Ophelia being used by her father as a pawn, put between a man she loves and her honor, being cast aside by a wealthier man who had more power than she did is a story resonates very deeply and ought to be considered universally important, but because the crown doesn’t rest on it somehow it’s marked as not important. Even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern got a spinoff instead of Ophelia! The biggest challenge is to change the perspective that a story about a woman, told by a woman, that isn’t about a big social movement or historical event, is nevertheless political and important, universally important, to the consciousness of our humanity. 


Danielle Ferrier:In your work, is there a through line?  A thread that connects them in some way? 

Cecilia Copeland: Female perspective is something that I feel is blatantly apparent in all of my work. This is not to say that I don’t render men with affection or that I don’t give my male characters different complex facets to their identity. However, it can be said that when reading my work it’s likely you will notice the prominence of women throughout. Women are central to my understanding of life being that I have spent my entire existence in a body and a world that never let me forget for one moment what I am in it, a woman. That’s not a bad thing, but it is what I am and I do not hide or apologize for it in my work. That’s pretty consistent. 


Danielle Ferrier:What themes do you love to write about?

Cecilia Copeland: The themes that I’m drawn to tend to be things I don’t have the answer to or can’t dismiss out of hand. Things which grab a hold of my mind and won’t get go are usually dark and disturbing. I get rattled by something horrible and then have to make peace with it in some way. By writing I am able to come to a truce with whatever is plaguing me. I will have done my part to wrestle it and bring it forward. What I end up writing about those things sometimes end up being comedies with a dark edge, but my work almost always tends to be a kind of tug of war between light and dark. That is most fascinating to me. 



Danielle Ferrier: As a woman what drives you to write about issues like rape culture?

Cecilia Copeland: I think what I said above speaks to this, but I’ll briefly elaborate. I was having a conversation with some male friends of mine talking about rape. They both knew more than one man who had been accused of sexual harassment and in one case sexual assault. They were doing what we all do for our friends, which is to be loyal and try to see it from their friend’s perspectives. It stands to reason that if their friends could be accused of wrongdoing so might they. Could they find themselves in a similar situation? It made them deeply uncomfortable to consider they might make or have made a similar mistake and who was to say what’s right/wrong in that grey area? What I said at the time, speaking as a woman who wrote a play about rape culture, was to bring back a memory from childhood, a moment in time when they were play-fighting with a sibling or a relative when one of you hurt the other one for real. The instant of knowing someone had been really hurt and didn’t like it anymore. That somebody was tapping “Uncle” or “Time out” or “stop” whatever the phrase or even just a look in that persons eyes when your body registered the fear and pain in someone else’s. They both looked at me and nodded with a complete awareness of what I meant. As children we learn about consent and body autonomy through things like playing and getting hurt or hurting someone else. Knowing how to read pain or the lack of consent in another person shouldn’t be a huge mystery. We all feel that as a kind of instinct. Rape Culture is the thing that teaches rapists to ignore the instinctual understanding that they are sexually hurting someone and should stop. That’s a powerful complex negative aspect of our society, and it’s one that I feel we need to dismantle. 

Cecilia's Website