An Interview with the Playwright: Steven Dietz

Edited for length and clarity by Micki Demby Kleinman

Portland Stage’s Directing and Dramaturgy Apprentice Micki Demby Kleinman sat down with prolific playwright Steven Dietz. Dietz opened up about his artistic background, his unique approach to playwriting and adaptation, and his creative decisions behind Murder on the Links.

Micki Demby Kleinman (MDK): Could you start off by telling me a bit about your theatrical journey up until this point?

Steven Dietz (SD): It was a great surprise to me and my family. I had essentially no theater in my upbringing. I didn't see my first play ‘til I was probably in high school, and that was a college production in Denver, and I got smitten with it. Candidly, I didn't really even know that there were living playwrights. I had a great professor in college that encouraged me to direct and steered me away from acting because I was quite the terrible actor. And then in 1980 my car broke down in a snowstorm in Minneapolis and I stumbled into an old church on East Franklin Avenue to try to find a telephone to call a tow truck…but that old church wasn’t a church, it was an organization called the Playwrights’ Center. Whatever lucky star I was born under made me walk in that door with just a nascent theater interest, and the cockiness of someone who was 21 and thought: the American theater needed me. That became my 11 years in Minneapolis; I just [talked] my way into directing these readings of plays, and some of those writers were August Wilson and Lee Blessing, John Olive and Barbara Field. I never did end up taking a playwriting class, but those 11 years at the Center were my grad school. I wish everyone a moment of kismet like that. I remain connected to the Playwrights’ Center to this day. Since then, I eventually moved to Seattle and was welcomed into a very vibrant theater community. Some years later, I took a teaching job at the University of Texas in Austin. I taught the MFA playwrights and directors for 12 years, and still continue to teach master classes around the country. My wife [playwright Allison Gregory] and I now divide our time between Seattle and Austin.

MDK: You directed the world premiere of Murder on the Links at North Coast Repertory Theatre. How does directing your plays influence you as a playwright, and how does being a playwright influence you as a director?

SD: I think they are two parts of the same experiment. I have plays that, when I'm writing them, the “director voice” in me is very strong—and I think Murder on the Links is a great example of that because the director in me was sitting at this desk trying to solve problems, trying to create scenarios of motion, invention, contradiction. But then I have plays that I feel like I just go down into my “writerly” self, and that's not always a play that I necessarily feel I need to direct. But directing Murder on the Links at North Coast Rep and then at Laguna Playhouse, it made me codify a narrative and performative style for the piece. I try to keep both those voices alive in me, but my best description of myself is probably that I'm a director who writes plays.

MDK: How does it feel to write a play, direct a play, and then hand it off to other artists?

SD: I love doing that. That is when the play gets truly tested. I don't want to make a play that needs me to follow it around to make it work, and if I were to think that, what a level of hubris that is! The thing I love about theater is that there's no such thing as a definitive production. As a playwright, I want there to be a lot of different energies and “takes” and performance approaches. And I better want that, frankly, because that is the field I have chosen to make my life in.

MDK: In the casting breakdown for this play in the script, you offer that Poirot or Hastings could be played by a woman. Why did you make that choice? Or why do you think that is significant?

SD: Well, a couple things. The bigger, meta thing is that I think the great roles in literature should be open to any performer. Hercule Poirot is surely one of those roles. I think that a great actor should get the chance to play a great role regardless of their gender or ethnicity. Recent theatrical history is filled with examples of this. Murder on the Links does not push that notion because the play does not have that political agenda, but I wanted to signal that on the character page of the script. Secondly, I thought the dynamic of a Poirot and Hastings relationship could be more fun if there was a little gristle or spice in the mix—and having them of differing genders does that almost immediately. And most importantly, this is a story about identity. We have twins, we have stories from the past where someone changed their identity and became someone else in the present, we have people repeatedly posing as people they're not—plus we have four actors playing about 30 people! Therefore, the play already has a “doubleness” to it. It seemed like a genderopenness to the casting of our two heroes would add to that mix in an enjoyable way.

MDK: This is your first adaptation of an Agatha Christie detective novel, of which there are over 60. Why did you choose to adapt this Agatha Christie book as opposed to the rest of her books?

SD: I'll tell you an artistic reason, and I’ll tell you a commercial reason. I believe in all candor that art is made by the marriage of both of those things. The commercial reason was that this book came into the public domain two years ago. [The artistic reason is that] I didn't know this book at all, and then I read it and I realized, this is unlike one of Dame Agatha’s little “jewel box” mysteries, confined to a room or trapped on a train. Instead, this was an expansive mystery, filled with coincidences, set in the French countryside. The fact that it was so open and expansive, I realized, oh, one could have fun with this. This could be both a delectable mystery and a delightful romp. It was frankly helpful to me that this is not one of Christie’s more popular titles like Murder on the Orient Express, where there would be precise audience expectations. A lesser known book gave me some room and license to invent, while still honoring the major story points of this 100+-year-old novel.

MDK: You spoke about your time at the Playwrights’ Center, and how integral new plays are to your artistry. Can you tell me a little bit about what it's like to adapt a play versus to create an original work? What are the challenges or advantages to either one?

SD: The advantage and challenge of an adaptation is that it is akin to taking a master class in storymaking. Not “plot” or some kind of “template”—but the core question of how does a story complicate itself? How does a story move forward, generate motion, keep feeding the audience while keeping them hungry to know more? When you are adapting something from a master like Agatha Christie, you get a thrilling and often very sobering lesson in writing. And when you add the transfer from one medium to the next—how do I make what is alive on the page be alive on the stage—you are certainly playing chess and not checkers. Nothing has sharpened my craft more than doing adaptations. What’s more, an adaptation demands that you find your voice inside the original author’s voice. There are likely many ways to approach this, but here is mine.

When considering an adaptation, I read the novel twice. I read it once for enjoyment, taking no notes, just taking it as it comes. And then I read it again, very slowly, marking story moves, character shifts, cool lines that I know must be in the resulting play. And after that second reading, I never open that book again. I have to trust that I have inculcated what I need from it, and must fill in the rest with my own invention. By the time I get into rehearsal, if someone asks me, “Hey Dietz, is that in the book?”, I have no idea how to answer them. I just know it's in the play.

MDK: Is there anything else you would like to share with Portland Stage’s audience?

SD: I take quite personally the responsibility of the theater to delight us. Just fully delight us. And I don't mean “make people happy” which I think is an altogether different thing. Delight is an inexplicable effervescence. Coming out of the pandemic, I thought to myself: what do I want to see? And as much as I love (and have authored) a wide array of theatrical genres, my answer to myself was delight. I want to feel welcomed, I want to be taken on a journey, and I want delightful surprises along the way. Murder on the Links felt to me like a book that had the opportunity to do all those things. So, what I would say to any producer of this play is come to it with an open heart…deliver the turns of this mystery…and dare to delight your audiences. This is harder than it seems, as you know. But fully worth the challenge. I have no doubt your artists and collaborators will succeed at doing just that. I’m delighted to have this play at Portland Stage.