Carlyle: That’s what this new project is: an unknown. Exploring friendship as friends and finding—
Noel: A theatrical way—
Carlyle: A process in which we do it and hope that we’re still friends when we’re finished.
Noel: Well, I’m not worried about not being friends. I’m worried about finding the time and space to actually do it.
Carlyle: We just started today, and we got really far. I think we found the question, and now we get specific.
Noel: The question we’ve been circling around for, what? A year or so now?
Carlyle: It’s been busy after the pandemic and stuff. It’s been really…
Noel: Yeah, it’s been busy for you even during the pandemic. You’ve had a couple of big projects in this last year if you think about the Cultural Diaspora Program with the Camargo Foundation and the production of A Play by Barb and Carl at Illusion Theater.
Carlyle: It has been super busy, yeah.
Noel: Because you’re famous.
Carlyle: Because the National Playwright Residency Program through the Mellon Foundation was just really a boon to me right at the right time. I’m in the third act of my creative life. I feel a renewal in my writing, so there’s no time like the present. It’s been totally fruitful because of collaborators like you who support me.
Noel: It’s really fun to see you move into this phase and have some resources and support.
Carlyle: One of the greatest things about it is to be able to say no. When your situation is dire economically, you tend to say yes to everything. Then everything is late, and there’s just more anxiety; your focus is not total and complete. Now, I feel like I’m really a working artist, and I enjoy it. I can do what I want.
Noel: And what do you want to do?
Carlyle: Well, I want to do something with you, right? To co-create, where I’m not the boss. And your idea is that we write a piece for us perform together.
Noel: Yeah.
Carlyle: Scary, scary.
Noel: You’ve done a bazillion solo shows!
Carlyle: That’s different.
Noel: How is that different?
Carlyle: I don’t know. It just is. It’s just me and the audience. Over time, I’ve gotten comfortable with that.
Noel: This will be a dive into the deep end of the pool, which I’m looking forward to. I need that to not get too comfortable.
Carlyle: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Noel: It’s terrifying at the same time though.
Carlyle: Yeah.
Noel: I mean, there’s this thing I learned this in grad school, the notion of a “daily act of courage.” You have a circle of what’s familiar, and you want to be forever expanding that circle because every act of courage makes having courage more possible.
Carlyle: Doesn’t mean it makes it easier.
Noel: It doesn’t make it easier. And like you just said with your solo work, the first time you venture out onto that stage with your mind full of an hour’s worth of content that you created—that you’re going to bring to life yourself—that was terrifying in a way that it isn’t for you anymore because you have made that part of your circle of the familiar.
Carlyle: When you come on stage alone, particularly, there’s nothing else to pay attention to but you. So everybody’s sort of looking at you, and then they see that you’re alone, vulnerable—
Noel: And they want you to be okay.
Carlyle: They want you to be okay, and you can feel that. That’s your cue. That’s that thread that you’re going to keep taut until the end of the performance.
Noel: But that’s a compact they’re also making with you, in which you are also committing to do something that will keep them engaged.
Carlyle: Right. There’s an exchange, a participation.
Noel: That is something else that we’ve been talking about: what is the audience experience of this?
Carlyle: This friendship thing?
Noel: Yeah.
What are some of the big social changes that have come about after people across differences were in tighter relationship with one another?
Carlyle: We’re not teaching something, but instead raising some truths and some surprises about the truth. It’s the idea that friendship is something to be perceived. It’s not concrete.
Noel: Like why are your friends your friends? How did the first encounter with them lead to, in our case, thirty years of work and relationship?
Carlyle: Already some of the research we’ve done is really interesting. Like Harry Houdini and Buster Keaton were friends; and Colonel Sanders and J. Edgar Hoover were friends. How do those things happen? It seems, at least from those blurbs, that they find a way despite their differences.
Noel: Or maybe even because of them. What you bring to a friendship, if you have different lived experiences and different intersectional identities, is part of the mystery of the world. I can access things through my relationship with you that I can’t know in my own self, right?
Carlyle: Yeah, exactly.
Noel: Especially for theatremakers—who are constantly trying to understand human beings, human behavior, human social systems, and what makes people do what they do—that’s a huge draw. It’s endlessly fascinating to see the world through your eyes.
Carlyle: And vice versa.
Noel: I think it has really enriched my life, my experience, and my ability to make art, honestly.
