An Interview with Mona Pirnot, Playwright of Private
Just before Mosaic’s world-premiere production of Private officially opened, artistic apprentice Fargo Tbakhi and artistic producer Chelsea Radigan sat down with playwright Mona Pirnot to talk about her process, her inspirations, and the work that went into writing her brilliant play. You can listen to the audio here, or read a transcript of the interview below.
Private runs through April 17th at Mosaic Theater. You can purchase tickets here.
An Interview with Mona Pirnot
Mona Pirnot: You can cut around this so that I sound smarter. For real. What's the word I'm looking for--
Fargo Tbakhi: Yeah. I'm actually just going to keep you--
Mona Pirnot: Just keep me saying that. Actually, that's fine. I'll seem charming. Then cut that out because then I'll seem conceited. God, I wish I could control my self image!
Fargo Tbakhi: But I'll keep all of this in, and then you sound really funny.
Mona Pirnot: Yeah. Okay, great.
[music begins, then fades out]
Fargo Tbakhi: How are you doing, Mona?
Mona Pirnot: I'm good. We just got off of our first tech run and then we did notes. So I'm resurfacing here.
Fargo Tbakhi: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And how are you feeling just generally about having the play exist in the world as a production right now? Are there any things in particular that you're really excited about being out in the world?
Mona Pirnot: I'm so proud of this production. I think our set is an eyeful. You're going to walk in and see something that you haven't seen before. Our cast is a dream. They're all so reliably spontaneous, like they're all-- they've been for weeks now, telling the story and the right shape of the story. And then within that-- you know, within that, like, reliability, they surprise me every single scene. There are multiple moments. So anyway, our actors are a treat. And then I very deeply believe in Knud and have been excited to work with him for a long time. And this is our first project together, so I'm really excited for audiences to see all of these cylinders firing because I think that they are.
Fargo Tbakhi: Yeah, absolutely. The engine of the play is raring to go. Well you mentioned the surprise that the actors have been giving you, and I wonder if, as throughout the process of seeing the play put up on its feet, seeing it staged, have there been things that you've discovered about the writing of it, about your own work that you hadn't seen before? Have there been things that kind of like jumped out at you through this process?
Mona Pirnot: Yeah. I mean, first thought I didn't have a very vivid picture of the stage when I wrote this one. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. And this one I really didn't. And in fact, the play kind of just begins, it almost like Big Bang begins. And I had no picture of like-- do lights come up? Are the two actors on stage, you know, mid surprise conversation or? And so literally seeing it on its feet has changed the way that the whole thing moves in a way that I could only begin to imagine before we were all in a room together up on our feet. The transitions, I mean, without giving anything away, but the transitions are indicated in the script as a certain thing. And we did that, but we also, I think, elevated it. I'm excited by some of our transitions-- and then the content... I mean, yeah, I've been writing this play for so many years that different parts of it felt essential to me at different times. Like I think-- I won't say what it is, but there are a couple of moments in the play that feel to me like the thesis of the play. There are two moments that feel to me that this is the idea and it has nothing to do with the speculative fiction stuff. It's not like this is the idea. The idea is how novel is it that privacy is something you'd pay for, like health insurance. It's this is the idea and it has to do with this exchange between a couple or this is the idea and it has to do with like compromise or grief or whatever. But actually those things, those moments were not clear to me until I saw it, until I started working on this production. Actually, I would say one of them was and one of them wasn't. So the text is even surprising me of like hearing that out loud in this context feels essential in a way that it didn't when I was, you know, when it was on the page.
Fargo Tbakhi: Yeah. How long have you been working on it? Like, when did this start for you?
Mona Pirnot: I think 2015. Yeah. I've been writing this play for a long time.
Fargo Tbakhi: Yeah.
Mona Pirnot: I think 2015.
Fargo Tbakhi: Yeah. And what was like, that initial seed for the project?
Mona Pirnot: Well, the seed was the, the seed was the prediction, the novel, you know, like rule about privacy. And the old drafts were really preoccupied with all of the rules and it was much more sci fi. And like there was a draft that was kind of Minority Report, like fingers out, you know, imagine like a finger as a stylus and whatever. So I was that was a couple of years of just needing to get that out of my. But I didn't start out wanting to write a play about a marriage. And also, I am seriously coupled now and have been with my partner for six years, but I started writing this play around the time or before we were together, so I didn't even have any experience with-- Why would I write a play about marriage? I hadn't had a serious relationship. So this-- you know, I was writing it only a couple of years after all the Snowden stuff. So everybody was thinking and talking about privacy and I was thinking about a reaction to it. I was thinking that as our lives get increasingly more data driven then more of our stuff is going to be out there. And I was getting an image of like shattered glass. How do you get it all back together? I mean, we were just talking about old Facebook post or photos or I mean, that kind of stuff can keep me up at night when I think, okay, I was, I was-- that was like ten people ago. The person who wrote that bad play, I don't even recognize her. It was me. But like, you know, I can't-- it's so hard to control your self image once it's been posted and released. So I was thinking about that and was thinking about a reaction to that. And a reaction might be that people will want more control over their data, whether it be like pictures or maybe in an increasingly data driven world conversations or I don't know how much would be logged. Maybe ten times as much as being logged now. And already what's being logged is a lot.
Fargo Tbakhi: Thinking about that beginning seed for Private being sort of the--the idea of it, right, or kind of the predictive quality of it, which didn't end up remaining sort of the heart of what the play was for you-- is that often how your projects start? Is it kind of idea forward? And then in the process of writing and revising and fleshing things out, some of the more deeper themes kind of like emerge or reveal themselves. Or was that specific to this project? Because it is a little bit more like conceptual, a little bit more heady, in its-- its hooky ness.
Mona Pirnot: No, I do think that there's-- I think that there has to be a quality of like, have you heard this story? When I'm going to start writing a play, if I can't describe it to someone at a party of like, did you read that crazy article? Have you heard this thing? You know, then it's probably not interesting enough for me to want to work on it for that long because I do. I write plays for like six years, seven years. I mean, not always, but I don't really understand how people write good plays and don't take years and years and years because it just-- it has to change with you. And that is just how much I iterate. But yeah, I think they all kind of start off with this with something about it that's novel. And the paying for privacy or privacy as a commodity was the novelty. And then the real story was about the marriage. I have another play that's this crazy, true story about this scientist who is developing a herpes vaccine in the Caribbean to do it outside of the FDA jurisdiction. So that very much has this quality of like this, "Did you read that Wired article?" I mean, my head exploded. It's so crazy. So yeah.
Fargo Tbakhi: Yeah. And I mean, just even to boil down, is it like-- are there places that you tend to find those stories most often or is it kind of all over the place? I mean, you sort of mentioned like Wired magazine.
Mona Pirnot: I do like pop science. Yeah, yeah. I have a couple of-- I mean, the plays I'm writing now actually are very different. I feel at the beginning of a big change. So it's a funny time to talk about what kind of writer I am when that's changing so much. But the kind of writer I have been, I have-- I am interested in pop science. I get really excited about forward thinking, revolutionary sciency stuff. Yeah.
Fargo Tbakhi: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Do you have a writing practice or a set of rituals, habits like places you like to write, or is it just sort of-- I mean, I think this is also a question that very much has to do with our material circumstances, like a lot of people just don't really have the room to be able to sit every single day at a desk and write. But yeah, are there particular spaces or environments or ways that you find yourself most invested, most productive?
Mona Pirnot: Yeah, I don't write well in public. Like I'm not a person who can park it at a coffee shop. I like to write at my desk at home. My brain is clearest in the morning. It's pretty hard for me. As the day goes on, my head gets muddier or more preoccupied with other people's problems, real people in my real life. So if they're going to be fake people's problems in my fake writing life, then I have to wake up and have my head clear and have my coffee and sit down and write for a few hours in the morning.
Fargo Tbakhi: So has the process over these years of writing Private— and I know also that you said that you're kind of feeling at the beginning of a change in the way that you approach a lot of projects. So this can be part of that, it can blend in with that or it can be a separate thing. But yeah, I mean, how has working on Private influenced the kinds of things that you've done since or like the ways that you've approached writing those projects? Have there been things that kind of echoed through or things that you were like, I maybe want to try this differently in a different thing? Obviously knowing, of course, that different projects have a lot of different elements to them.
Mona Pirnot: That's a really good question. My other couple of plays are very different from Private. The clinical trials one I was just talking about is two long, real time scenes. So it's like close time, closed space. Well, not quite because there the two scenes are a month apart, but it's like two forty-five minute long scenes. Private is a hot, seventy minutes. I mean, I don't know what we're running at right now, but she's a hot seventy, I think. And it's, you know, seven tight scenes. I have not since written a play like that. I wonder if in part it's because it was so hard. I mean, I feel very proud of where the shape that that play has landed in. To me, that's what like just years of rewriting looks like. It's just iterating, iterating, iterating, iterating. And honestly, I don't know if I have the stamina to do it again any time soon. Like I said, the play afterwards, two long scenes, and now the play that I'm working on is something entirely different, formally, and I like mixing it up formally.
Fargo Tbakhi: I was going to ask about your approach to form and to kind of experimenting with some of those structural things, especially hearing about some of the other projects that you're working on now. And like, what is it about that excites you? What is it that feels engaging and interesting about that these days?
Mona Pirnot: Yeah, and that's such a big question because form is everything. Form is everything. I mean, dialogue is like go to the dialogue store and buy more. Form is everything. And I don't know how to begin a play until I have a picture of the form or it changes a lot. And that's also part of the work. I mean that clinical trials that I was just talking about at one point was multiple scenes and another point it was one long scene. Ultimately what it wanted to be was two scenes. So I stay open minded to the form. I think something-- I'm certainly not a maximalist, I think that's clear if you've read Private and I think that part of what helps me choose a form is directing the audience which way to look, like with Private. I mean, no one's going to get this on a podcast, but I get the visual image of like plugging a bunch of holes up in a boat and being like, Look over there! Because, you know, so much so many drafts of that were like establishing the rules of the world.
Fargo Tbakhi: Right.
Mona Pirnot: I have a really comprehensive understanding of the rules of this world, but it's not something that I like to talk about because it's not to me the important part of the play. So I know the rules, I've given just enough, you know, to explain hopefully enough to where we're invested in the human relationships in this world. Not like how do people pay for the privacy and are there devices that listen? And so I think sometimes form comes out of like all the places you don't want people to look and with the clinical trials play like there are so-- I mean, I did a lot of reading to fake it, to understand things about like, you know, FDA approval. And I learned a lot about vaccines and learned a lot about all of this stuff, but I still am so not an authority on any of those subjects. What am I an authority on? I don't-- I don't know. But maybe something to do with human relationships. So, you know, the form of that play was a reaction to what do I have the right to talk about? I think I have the right to have all of these people in a room talking about how they feel as lab rats.
Fargo Tbakhi: Well, in the process of looking for that, the form that the projects want to be, what-- like what are the tools that you tend to rely on to like experiment to sort of iterate what those different forms could be, right? Is it a lot of workshops, readings, kind of hearing it that that unlocks that for you? Or do you tend to kind of live inside the world of the text and try different things there.
Mona Pirnot: Yeah, I mean, well, even before I hear it or get in a room with people, most-- a lot of that work comes-- there's a phase where it's really helpful to read other plays, and then there's a phase where you have to stop doing that because it's too noisy and you have to focus on your own play. And it's sometimes too tempting to read a certain form and go like, Oh, that works so well, maybe I should do that. And I mean, I read so many plays that either felt relevant or irrelevant to Private and-- Private actually, I mapped out A Number, which is one of my favorite plays, Caryl Churchill's A Number and Great God Pan, another one of my favorite plays, Amy Herzog. And Private was sort of like a baby of the two of them, because I learned a lot from A Number of how to subtract, how to have your own understanding of the rules of a world that's different than ours, but then subtract it and focus on other things. And then Amy Herzog's plays are just-- my partner and I always say it's like a well made piece of sushi. Like the way that she arranges scenes I think is just super smart. So I kind of learned from those plays. But then-- and I also read a lot of nonfiction. I mean, I read like many, many books, anything I could get my hands on with privacy stuff until I realized it actually wasn't all that important. But yeah, I think I learned a lot about form by reading what other people have done with form and then totally abandoning it and then starting to listen to my own script and then starting to listen to my own script in other people's hands. Like that's the order of operations. I have to have that much of an understanding before I'm even going to go into a room and, you know, be open minded to hear what actors have to say about it, for example.
Fargo Tbakhi: Yeah, absolutely. Well, you also touched on this a little bit earlier, especially when we were talking about form and in writing Private as ten very-- or seven very tight scenes. But throughout the process, have there been things with Private in particular that were very specifically challenging to write, things that like you got stuck on in whatever way that you want to address this, obviously. Any challenges? Just generally that stick with you.
Mona Pirnot: Oh, my God. Imagine me going prrrffft and a scroll rolls down the block because yeah of course.
Fargo Tbakhi: Yeah, I'll put that sound in.
Mona Pirnot: Yeah, put that in.
[scroll sound plays]
Mona Pirnot: Where to begin? I mean, I already have talked a bit about establishing the rules and having consistent rules of a world that's X amount of years in the future. That was hard. It was also really hard to know what-- you know, the story centers on this couple. It centers on Corbin and Georgia, and it took a lot of trial and error to realize how much of their lives outside of their relationship with each other I wanted to show. There were drafts for many years where Rayna, the boss, who's mentioned throughout the play but is not a character, she was a character in many drafts. And then right now this is a four person play. So we've got Abby. Rayna's assistant, Corbin and Georgia, and then Jordan, Georgia's friend. You know, that Jordan character slotted in and out of just like a revolving door of relationships. I was like, is it her sister or is this her mom? Is this her ex is this her friend? Is this like her work? Do we want to see her at work? I mean, I didn't know for years and years and truly like hundreds and hundreds of pages of options of how I wanted to open us up into Georgia's life. And that really goes for any play that I write or that anyone writes is like different combinations of characters that either exist in the play or don't. Like sometimes I-- this is actually a writing exercise I learned from my partner, but he will sometimes write down his characters on index cards and then-- in the earliest phases of writing a play-- and then shuffle up the index cards and be like, All right, so there's a scene with Mona and Chelsea. There's a scene with Chelsea and Fargo. There's a scene with Fargo and Mona, any combination. What can you learn about these characters when they're combined together? But before I even had those index card options, like, oh my God, it was so hard to settle on who I wanted to be in the play.
Fargo Tbakhi: Yeah, absolutely. Well, how has Private developed in terms of like its productions over time? And how does it feel to be arriving here like about to see it with an audience?
Mona Pirnot: Yeah, Private's had a long developmental history. The first opportunity I had to hear it out loud was I won a spot at the Premiere Play Festival at Kean University in New Jersey, and I don't remember what year that was. I think it was 2017, it was that far back and that was when there were two different characters in the play. It's changed so much since then. That was when Rayna was still in the play, the boss. Georgia had a different relationship with the character now known as Jordan. And it was a day reading, and I learned a lot about the play from that, and then did a couple of virtual readings. But the biggest step in its development was going on to Williamstown. I developed this play at Williamstown with a great director named Maya Davis and a great cast who I learned a lot from and tailored a lot of language to, really brilliant actors including dear friends of mine, Zoe Winters and Peter Mark Kendall, who did a couple of readings of it, both at Williamstown and elsewhere. And then I met Chelsea virtually in 2020.
Fargo Tbakhi: You've known Knud for a while, right?
Mona Pirnot: Yeah, kind of. I mean, I've known of Knud and we met really briefly at, I think, his Summerworks back in probably 2018 or something. And then we had a coffee, just a "I like your stuff, you like my stuff" coffee a few years ago, pre-pandemic. And then I basically cold called him out of the blue after Mosaic. I was like, Well, I want it to be Knud. I mean, he's such a good match for the play. He's such a good match for any play, but he's so effing stylish. I mean, he's got this Midas touch. Everything he touches turns to gold, but he's-- more importantly than that, and that is important, because that is like, you know, people don't make things that look as good as his stuff. It's just I love every play I've ever seen of his. But he's really-- he has a really clear picture of the story of the play. And every production I've seen of his really services the playwright and they're so different in that way. They've always got this signature Knud touch where there's something unexpected or stylish in the way that it looks. And they're always very design forward, but they always, without fail, elevate what the play already is doing. So clearly I'm a fan of his and I've been a fan of his, so we've known each other, but were kind of just acquaintances before this, just kind of knew each other around New York and it's a small world up there.
Fargo Tbakhi: Yeah. And how has it been matching with the play?
Mona Pirnot: It's been a dream. Yeah, he has either supported and elevated what I hoped to be the best case scenario of anything from casting to the way that a scene should be played, to the way that the stage should look. Or he hasn't, you know, elevated what I pictured because I couldn't even picture it. Or he's just surprised me in ways that I couldn't even anticipate.
Fargo Tbakhi: We talked about like where-- some of the sources that you get inspiration for projects, some of the sort of web of places that those ideas come from. But just generally, what kinds of art have you been loving lately? Like what has been moving you? And that doesn't even have to be anything that's actually inspired writing, but just what has nourished you.
Mona Pirnot: Yeah, yeah. No, I appreciate that because those would be two different answers. Stuff that falls into vision board, for the vision board homework category for Private is very different than the stuff that I love to watch that has nothing to do with anything I would ever write. I think I'm most excited by documentaries. I'm most consistently excited by documentaries. I just watched this documentary from the eighties called Stripper. That was extraordinary. There's a documentary called Jasper Mall that I saw a couple of years ago that is so profound. It's very funny and very dark and it's just poetry. Honeyland. So many documentaries come to mind. Rupaul's Drag Race. Nothing matters more to me than RuPaul's Drag Race. No, I'm not even kidding. There is no higher art or there's nothing I care about more. All of my-- as far as playwrights, I mean, I could give a whole list of playwrights that inspire me or that I love. But just in general, I'm really proud that some of my best friends are my favorite playwrights. So all of my Youngblood crew, all of my Youngblood contemporaries are like, I think some of the most exciting playwrights out there right now. And they also just so happen to be my BFFs. And I read a lot. I read a lot of fiction and nonfiction, but I wouldn't go down the list of those. And my partner, my partner is my favorite playwright probably. And I think it would be easy to take him for granted when I see and live with his agonizing writing process. Agonizing. I've seen how that sausage is made, but I don't take it for granted. I think he's extraordinary and he's probably my favorite playwright and we inspire each other every day.
Fargo Tbakhi: Thinking about on the other side of this, right? The work that did go into the Private homework bucket. Are there— are there some ones that you want to shout out? Anything that like, led to something very surprising in the development of this script?
Mona Pirnot: I mean. I already said that I read and mapped out Amy Herzog's Great God Pan, and I read and mapped out Caryl Churchill's A Number. Ted Chiang, I think, is a really great example of someone who writes very beautiful stories that just so happen to be sci fi. “Arrival” was one of my favorite stories, and I thought the movie was excellent too. So often the movie adaptations of fiction disappoint, but I thought it was gorgeous. I love Ted Chiang. Yeah. What else? It's been so long because I said that the phase is like consumption and then abandon that. And it's truly-- it's been years since I've been in that phase, but I haven't forgotten the Amy Herzog, Caryl Churchill thing.
Fargo Tbakhi: Totally. Well, I mean, yeah, throughout those past years and we've talked about it, talked a little bit about around it and about it. But as we're getting to the production and as you've kind of spent maybe some more intensive time with the script after so long, what are some of those things that have changed for you as you revisit it now, right? I mean, having had it grow with you for six years, are there any elements of it that are resonating with you differently or feeling different to you than they have in the past?
Mona Pirnot: Yeah, definitely. I mean, without giving anything away, there are a couple of-- there's compromise in every single scene. There's a negotiation that has to be made in every single scene. And then there are a couple of failures and betrayals and things like that. And it took a really long time to balance the scales, to make sure that, you know, these are people with competing needs who are really trying their best. And sometimes there's something between them and sometimes it's like there's something out in front of us and it's me and you against this thing. And that's changed so much. And up until recently, up until like today, I probably gave a line note that was trying to balance the scales. So I think that's the thing that's changed the most without being let go of because like I said, there have been any number of audition scenes, meaning like scenes that I auditioned to be like, I don't know, let's try this for scene five. Maybe it's like, you know, Corbin meets with his boss's husband or whatever. I write so much scrap material that's later abandoned. But this has been keeping an eye on making sure that everyone is making reasonable points and that no one-- yeah, that's really the way to say it. Like everyone's making reasonable points, everyone wants competing things, everybody's trying their best. Like it's been a constant dance and I'll change that up until the script is officially locked.
[music fades in]
[music fades out]
Fargo Tbakhi: What is your worst fear?
Mona Pirnot: [laughter]
Fargo Tbakhi: If you were a vegetable, what vegetable would you be?
Mona Pirnot: Cucumber.
Fargo Tbakhi: Cucumber? Why?
Mona Pirnot: I don't know.
Fargo Tbakhi: You were very quick with cucumber.
Mona Pirnot: So I could become a pickle.