Christian Kiley
Episode 69: Christian Kiley
Teacher Christian Kiley is also a published author and a cancer survivor. He talks about writing for youth, and how he used cancer as motivation to write a play.
Show Notes
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Episode Transcript
Welcome to TFP, The Theatrefolk Podcast. I am Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Hello, I hope you’re well. Thanks for listening.
So, today we have an interview with teacher, playwright, and cancer survivor, Christian Kiley. We have a number of Christian’s plays in our catalog and all of which will include links for in the show notes. We have The Art of Rejection, Chaired, two one-act plays in one book which are so awesomely absurd and also grounded in reality, if that can be, Virtual Family, Discovering Rogue, and his latest, Chemo Girl which is a collection of plays which explore the teen perspective of dealing with cancer. It is such an excellent collection for the variety of plays and the theatricality of them. It’s not just, you know, play after play of “I have cancer.” It’s so much more. It’s got humor and fantasy and humanity – I think that’s a real great little package of emotions for such a difficult subject matter. So, check them all out, theatrefolk.com, and especially check out Chemo Girl.
So, Christian teaches out in California which I am very keenly aware of as I sit in the office of the Theatrefolk global headquarters, and we are preparing for the first big winter storm of the year, and I like living in a place that has four seasons – I like them all – and I know that, if I want to enjoy fall which is my absolute favorite season, that means winter comes next. But there’s something a little bit deflating in sitting here, looking out the window, and I see bare dry pavement and green grass and knowing that it’s all about to be history, and I’m going to sit here unquietly, sigh to myself, and you are going to move right on to the interview.
Oh, but, just before we do that. Okay, one thing I wanted to say about these podcasts, and also about how you can use them in the classroom, particularly our playwright interview podcasts, have your students listen to the interviews, all of which, you know, there are a good variety in our interview podcast because we have writers of varying histories, varying experiences, but all of them talking about doing something similar – what it’s like to write a play – and then, have students reflect afterwards.
Does listening to a playwright talk make the act of writing more tangible for them? You know, what were they surprised at what the playwright had to say about writing? What was the most memorable part of the interview? And, how did the interview sort of inform their beliefs about what it was like to write a play? Did it dissuade any beliefs? So, I will include a download self-reflection handout on the Theatrefolk blog post page for this podcast. Whew!
Okay, now onto Christian Kiley.
Lindsay: Alright, so hello there, welcome to the podcast and I am thrilled to be able to say hello to Christian Kiley. Hello!
Christian: Hello, Lindsay!
Lindsay: How are you?
Christian: I’m very good, thank you.
Lindsay: And you are all the way across on the other side of the North America in California.
Christian: Yes, Southern California, Rancho Cucamonga.
Lindsay: Now where is that? Give me a city that I would know. [Laughs]
Christian: Well, [laughs] Ontario has an airport that you guys have probably flown into…
Lindsay: Oh, yes.
Christian: …I would say.
Lindsay: Yes.
Christian: You know, the US Ontario.
Lindsay: Fabulous. Well, we have a little in connection then – you’re in the US Ontario and we’re in the Canadian Ontario.
Christian: Yes, we’re sister cities.
Lindsay: [Laughs] Awesome. Okay, so now Christian, you have a number of plays with us. We first got to know you with Art of Rejection and Chaired, and then we moved on to…was there one between Discovering Rogue?
Christian: Virtually Family as well.
Lindsay: Excellent! Oh, Virtual Family, I love that! And Discovering Rogue, and lastly, the wonderful collection, Chemo Girl. And so the first thing I kind of wanted to get to know for you to share with our listeners here is, what is your theatre background? Because you are a teacher, right?
Christian: That’s correct. I teach high school theatre. They call it drama, which I sort of resent a little bit and I don’t know how the other teachers feel.
Lindsay: Ooh, tell me why, tell me why. Why do you resent the term drama?
Christian: Well, theatre arts is…to me it’s a discipline, and drama is something that has been conveyed in kind of a negative light with reality TV and things like that.
Lindsay: Ah.
Christian: And maybe it’s just the colloquial misuse of drama which has sort of stuck with the discipline.
Lindsay: Right. Yeah. So you don’t want to be associated with girls who talk loudly and pull each other’s hair.
Christian: Or even bald guys like me who try to pull each other’s hair, because that’s really a lot of drama.
Lindsay: [Laughs] That is a lot of work. Okay, so tell us about your background. What’s your theatre background?
Christian: Well, I never participated in high school, and I really admire all my students and all the students that I see who have the guts to do any of this. And when I was 19 years old, my first year in college, I followed a couple of cute young ladies into the…what turned out to be the theatre to audition for a version of The Little Mermaid. I’d never auditioned for anything, and sort of on a dare I got up there and tried out, and I ended up getting sort of Prince Eric’s funny brother.
Lindsay: [Laughs]
Christian: I was like the comic-relief prince. And then I just was in a series of plays after that. Surprisingly, I was in King Lear shortly after that. I ended up playing Oswald, Regan’s kind of serving gentleman. And that was it, I just kind of fell in love. It was definitely love at first sight. And you talk so eloquently about this as well. You just kind of find your niche.
Lindsay: Right.
Christian: And sometimes it’s circumstances and sometimes it’s your own choices, but you end up finding your way. And I directed a play, The Insanity of Mary Girard, and it turned out I was really I think pretty good at the conceptual ideas and working with actors, and actors kept asking me to direct. So I ended up after my time at Gonzaga, where I got my BA in Spokane, I went to Cal State Fullerton and I was the NFA director there for three years, and I got a chance just to direct like crazy.
Lindsay: That must have been a wonderful experience.
Christian: It really is. I mean, and you know this too, the collaboration of theatre is amazing and it keeps you coming back. It’s like no other buffet. You imagine a buffet in Neverland with everything’s boneless and colorful and nothing could…you know…
Lindsay: [Laughs]
Christian: And that’s kind of…that’s how theatre has been for me. And then I was writing for a while and I wrote kind of a funky little play called The Last Stand of Alvin K Harley, and you could never find it anywhere. It was printed on a dot matrix computer, a printer.
Lindsay: Oh.
Christian: And I got really heavily criticized by some adjudicators that came and they didn’t like the blending of different styles and genres, and I basically quit writing for seven or eight years. And I bring this up to my students all the time as a point of advocacy against quitting because I think you should always try to do what you love.
Lindsay: And it’s so subjective, eh? Like, you know, one person’s or two people’s opinions, it doesn’t mean they’re right, you know? And it’s a wonderful thing to teach students to stand up for what they believe in—and you’re right—and not quit.
Christian: Well, you have so many great stories about this too, about when you were sort of flourishing on the professional scene and then there was a…
Lindsay: Oh, I got some lovely stories. [Laughs]
Christian: [Laughs]
Lindsay: There are people out there who died and I was happy that they died because they treated me so poorly, so. [Laughs]
Christian: Figuratively died or…?
Lindsay: Oh, literally died.
Christian: Oh, okay, well…
Lindsay: So that tells you…well, that tells you that I’m not a good person, but you know. [Laughs]
Christian: Oh, it’s okay. I’ve been doing some of that cheerleading too in my life.
Lindsay: [Laughs]
Christian: So that’s fine. [Laughs]
Lindsay: Okay, so back to you. So how do you talk to your students about not quitting?
Christian: Well, we have a thriving student playwriting program at Etiwanda High School and they have an opportunity to write issue-based theatre, which you’re really a pioneer in that area as far as I’m concerned, and that’s just…you give them opportunities to write and to express themselves. And I know you have an upcoming publication coming out about writing as a discipline, and not just the inspiration but the rules and guidelines and disciplinary precepts involved in that, and I just, you know, you give them that gym set.
Lindsay: Yeah.
Christian: You make them realize, “Here’s a home gym. All you have to do is use it.”
Lindsay: I love that. I love that image of the home gym because it makes it…it’s there for you to use. And you have to put together the home gym appropriately, and then you can play.
Christian: Absolutely. No, absolutely.
Lindsay: Okay, I’m stealing that. I’m telling you that right now. [Laughs]
Christian: [Laughs]
Lindsay: Okay, and then what led you to teach?
Christian: You know, I started teaching history of all things, and I’m going to be honest here, I needed a job and I went into interview at this small private school. When I ultimately have the job from the third floor where my classroom was, I could see the Hollywood sign. So it sort of had this romance and I could always say, “Ooh, the industry is…I could throw a tennis ball and go hit the O or shoot it through the O like a bull’s-eye.” I guess one of the O’s – there are more than one there.
Lindsay: [Laughs]
Christian: So it was a circumstance and in the interview I even remember being asked, “Do you have any experience teaching history?” and I sort of went on some random diatribe about Abraham Lincoln or something. And I don’t know how that sealed the deal, but I guess I’ll always have to thank Abe for that whether he’s a vampire slayer or a president, for that opportunity.
Lindsay: Or both.
Christian: Right. Well, and then I realized the thing I liked most about teaching are these moments that you have just kind of springing out of nowhere in the desert or whatever and suddenly there’s this blossoming thing, and it’s this moment that you have with the student where you have this aside and you’re talking about a scene and they’re listening, and there’s an epiphany maybe on their part that they’ve discovered something. And I realized this teaching gig is a pretty cool thing and it’s something that always changing and it’s dynamic.
Lindsay: I think, and this I think is very true of I think in theatre, is that the only place now where theatre can actually change a life is in school, and that when you have those conversations with the student and you actually see the light go on in their eyes or just as simple as the confidence that they gain from being onstage, it’s something that I’m so happy to be…even to play a small part of in that, in their lives.
Christian: Well, and you play a big part, and I’ve seen your posts about things that happen in playwriting workshops and all of the positive energy that comes out of that. And Kevin Spacey brings it up in Shakespeare High, the documentary. He talks about the transcendent qualities of theatre. And you see it when you go to the grocery store and things like that. You want people that are going to interact with you in a warm and kind of sympathetic, compassionate way. And I think theatre gives our young people the tools to do that.
Lindsay: Absolutely. We’re on the same page.
Christian: [Laughs] We are maybe the same word.
Lindsay: Maybe the same word. So okay, so now what led you to… So you have a history of writing and you put it in the drawer for seven years. So were you working in the classroom again when the bug started to hit or how did writing for students evolve for you?
Christian: Well, and I didn’t even know that there was a Theatrefolk or anything like that out there. So we have these opportunities to go to one-act competitions and do things, and I kind of panicked – I thought, “What am I going to do? Am I going to have my own cutting of Shakespearean play or some other play that I know?” So I decided to write one. And I wrote a play, again unpublished and I doubt anyone else has ever done it, and it came in I think fourth place or something at one of these competitions. But there were quite a few comments about, “You know, that was pretty powerful,” or “It was a meaningful experience,” and I thought, “Oh my gosh, maybe this is something.” And I also enjoyed the process a good deal. I was aware of the fact that I’m never going to be stacking hundred-dollar bills with 50 Cent and Jay-Z or something like that…
Lindsay: [Laughs] Neither am I, Christian, neither am I.
Christian: [Laughs] But it still… The other day I got a chance to see Chemo Girl and other plays, all four of the one-acts at El Dorado High School in Placentia in Orange County, and I got a chance to meet with the casts beforehand and have a question and answer and all of that. And you know this even much, much better than I do, but sitting and watching your own words live onstage with a production that you had nothing to do with really, except for writing it, not the process of rehearsing, and then listening to and being a part of the crowd reactions, is really magical in a way—and I say this with total seriousness and sincerity—that is beyond celebrity.
Lindsay: Yeah.
Christian: You’re so immersed in that moment. And I got a chance to bring my oldest daughter Ella to closing night of Chemo Girl and other plays, and it was just very emotional I think for both of us.
Lindsay: Oh, I imagine. I imagine it was just a…well, it’s an experience. Like I’ll never forget the very first time I was sitting on the floor of the back of this barn when my very first play was performed, and listening to an audience and going, “Oh that is interesting. Like that’s what that feels like.” And do you ever have this experience where you’re watching a production of your show and you’re like, “I don’t know who wrote this. Who wrote this? This might be okay.” Like it just, “I don’t know.” Do you ever have that…?
Christian: It’s an extreme…yeah, an extreme form of suspension of disbelief. It’s almost like you believe the Halloween costumes so much, you look in the mirror…
Lindsay: Yeah.
Christian: …actually frightened of your own image, yeah.
Lindsay: Yeah! Oh yeah, I can…it never grows old for me. It never does. And it’s the kind of thing, too, where when I go and see a show, when I, “Oh, I’ll go see high school shows,” that’s all I do, and they come up to me afterwards and they’re so genuine and they’re so…like they’re so happy and they’re always like, “Well, what did you think? What did you think? What did you think?” And I’m like, “I’ll always tell you you did a wonderful job because you chose my play, you brought it to life, everyone around me had a good time. Why on earth would I tell anything different, you know? I had a wonderful time.”
So you wrote your first play and the bug kind of got in you, and then what prompted you to write…so the first play that we know is, um, actually you sent me Pound, didn’t you? Did you send me…?
Christian: I did. I’d sent you probably a couple of. I think I sent Baggage, and you actually have a play that’s somewhat similar in concept and scope to Baggage, so my play might sort of be a generic knockoff [laughs] maybe of your play, I don’t know. So yeah, I did send you Pound. And then Art of Rejection was the first play that you guys picked up.
Lindsay: So what inspired that for you? Where did that…?
Christian: Well, that’s very real, both of those plays are, which is a product of some of the bullying I went through in junior high. I kind of had thick glasses and not great teeth and I was picked on a bit, and so the idea of R and representing rejection in a world of numbers was kind of what I went through growing up a little bit.
Lindsay: Right.
Christian: And I know young people today have it much more difficult because they can’t hide in their rooms. I at least would be able to come home, cry, have a huge gooey cookie and an enormous glass of milk, and go up to my room and sort of I could hide there. But the cyber world, I mean the fact that you and I are doing this right now, which is amazing…
Lindsay: Isn’t it? Craig and I were talking about it today. It’s like, okay, so we’re sitting in front of computers and you’re all the way over there and I’m sitting all the way over here, and we basically can have a conversation. It floors me.
Christian: It’s incredible. It’s also a little bit frightening too because I always get a little paranoid about, “Ooh, this means theatre is sort of losing some of its traction, but…
Lindsay: Oh, they’ve been saying that for years.
Christian: You’re right, and I’ve heard you say that before. It’s just a phobia. I don’t think it’s necessarily legitimate, so. But yeah, the play is based on real feelings, and I kind of, even though it’s a very serious subject, I like to throw comedy in there as well because I think it’s important to be able to laugh at yourself and the foibles that you’ve gone through in your personal history, which you’re very good at doing this as well, so.
Lindsay: Well, I think that what I quite like about your work is that there is that…I love that connection of realism-absurdism, I guess I would call it, where your style is a little bit not traditional and there’s always something…but there’s always something…it’s grounded. Grounded absurdism – there you go. That’s the thing that I think it is.
Christian: I’ll take that.
Lindsay: And it seems like that drawing from your own life is something that speaks to you. Why do you think that is?
Christian: Yeah. I don’t know. It’s almost as if you have a language that you can speak and you didn’t practice it, but you just kind of wake up one morning in this creepy kind of phenomenon way and you can do this. And [laughs] I feel like to a certain extent that’s true, but I definitely learned from more experienced writers like yourself that there are disciplinary parts of it that need to be practiced, and there are books I’ve read that sort of support that same idea. You have to stretch the muscles and use them and not…they’re not just vanity play.
Lindsay: No. I think the style that…or not the style, the stuff that works for you is the stuff that works for you, you know? Like there’s no one way to do this crazy thing, and whatever gets words…I think it’s whatever gets words on the page is the method that works, right?
Christian: Oh, for sure. I think the acting parallel is the use of substitution. I never want to ask an actor what their substitution is necessarily. It comes out in the performance. It’s fuel for the performance and it’s private. And I think it’s kind of like whatever’s in our tanks – some of us run on gummy bears, some of us run on apple cider, some of us run on just breathing the air, and so it’s different for everybody, like you said.
Lindsay: Absolutely. So what is it like to have your very own sort of mini acting studio that you can take your work to and just sort of throw it at them and go, “Okay guys, what do you think of this?”
Christian: It’s pretty awesome, and I’m grateful for my school leadership and all the people that let me do it because I know there’s a lot of micromanaging that could go on out there. And the fact that there’s that amount of trust with the young people that I work with and their parents and leadership at school and, you know, particularly you guys as well with the amount of trust that you’ve had in my work, that all helps, but it’s neat because you can try things. And I brought things in – the other day I brought something in and we read it and it just kind of hit the fan wrong, and oops, you know, but you go back and you try again.
Lindsay: But you must have a good sense of knowing not to be precious about it, that it, “Oh, that didn’t work. Okay, I got to go back and…” like you’re not blaming the students.
Christian: No, no. No. I think in failure they can learn as much as they do in success. That’s actually what rehearsal is, right? It’s a systematic, planned set of failures that sometimes are unplanned in the actualexplosiveness of them or birth of the failures.
Lindsay: I wish that was the thing that was actually taught in school. I think if students were taught to fail on a regular basis, I think that they would all get out into the world and be pretty amazing human beings. It’s the safety net that holds everybody back.
Christian: We talked about that very thing today, working on Shakespeare monologues and getting up there and doing something that seems wrong where you can call it playing the opposite or whatever—terminology is less important on that—but yeah, the idea of just swinging out of your shoes and making the mistakes and learning that way.
Lindsay: So as you have written over the years, has your process remained basically the same? Has it changed from your first play to now?
Christian: Yes, and I think revisions are much more important to me now than they used to be. When I first started writing I would write something and there was sort of this false sacred quality to it like it couldn’t be touched, and I’ve seen you say or write that a writer who doesn’t redraft or rework is not really a process-based writer, and I would agree with that much more now than I did. And I think that I like to kind of have that first step where it comes out of you quickly, and then you can piece it together later and break it apart. It loses a lot of the romance for me when I try to do too much in the way of structuring and planning early on. I kind of have to get the idea out all the way first and then shape it.
Lindsay: Are you a…do you use computer all the time? Do you start with pen and paper?
Christian: I like to write on airplanes sometimes when I’m traveling…
Lindsay: Yeah.
Christian: …or any mode of transportation when I’m not driving…
Lindsay: [Laughs]
Christian: …and that’s on whatever I can find. Art of Rejection – a lot of it was written on napkins and I think a barf bag from an airplane that’s not called a barf bag. It’s an airsick bag.
Lindsay: [Laughs]
Christian: It’s a helper on the airplane.
Lindsay: Yes.
Christian: But yeah, so I…unfortunately because of time, often I will go directly onto the computer, but it’s not in the format or structure that it will ultimately be in when actors use it or work on it.
Lindsay: My absolute favorite thing is writing on airplanes because there’s nowhere to go, you can’t work on the phone, you can’t go online, and I’m like I’m going to a conference this weekend and I’m actually plotting out what I’m going to do [laughs] on my flight.
Christian: Well, you can pretend—and really you don’t have to pretend—the stakes are high because you have this limited amount of time. So if you tell yourself, “Okay, when we get off the plane, Lindsay or Christian, we’re going to have a draft of a play.”
Lindsay: Yeah.
Christian: And it’s kind of a neat…you’re setting your own reality TV show.
Lindsay: [Laughs] I’m not sure anyone would watch that, watch the writer write for two hours…
Christian: There’ll be two of us.
Lindsay: [Laughs]
Christian: We’d be watching that.
Lindsay: Who is going to—it could be a competition. Which one of these writers will get their draft done first? [Laughs]
Christian: Well, yeah.
Lindsay: You’re in LA – you should pitch that. [Laughs]
Christian: Right. I have some other ideas but we can talk about that later. That’s probably not for now. [Laughs]
Lindsay: [Laughs] Oh my goodness. Alright. So lastly—so let’s end this on a nice big general question—what does theatre mean to you? After all this time that you’ve spent acting and directing and writing, what does it mean to you?
Christian: You know, it’s interesting and that’s such a great question – theatre is probably my oldest and longest-standing friend.
Lindsay: Uh-huh.
Christian: When a lot of other people have come and gone in and out of my life, theatre’s been a stable for me and kind of a foundation, I guess, a stable force for a foundation. And especially when I was going through chemotherapy and I was writing Chemo Girl and other plays, it really was a medicine and I feel like a medicine that I kind of created myself some of it, and it’s been amazing. I mean, it’s been an over-20-year relationship for me, so that makes it pretty special.
And the characters that we write may come and go, and some of the accolades and accomplishments and holding your first script in your hand, which is an amazing feeling that I hope that never ends even if everything is online and people can download like crazy, which I love, but I hope we can always kind of hold it and it can be tangible. But theatre will always be that way to me.
And I still remember seeing my brother, my younger brother, being in plays. He was the boy in The Velveteen Rabbit when we were little. And I watched a lot of theatre and I didn’t really participate, but even then I could kind of feel that tiny little seed, and I think it’s grown into something. Sometimes it’s kind of horrific and it’s going to cloudward, but I think it’s special too.
Lindsay: I think…and that’s why theatre will never die, because it’s so personal to every person who comes across it. It is a relationship, and I think that’s pretty wonderful. Well, that was just lovely.
Christian: That was great. Thank you. [Laughs]
Lindsay: It was a real treat talking to you, and thank you so much for taking some time and just having a little chat and a laugh about theatre.
Christian: Thank you, and I’m sorry about earlier. I’m going to get better with technology – I will soon be able to operate a microwave.
Lindsay: [Laughs] Thank you, Christian.
Before we go, let’s do some Theatrefolk News.
Do not – I hope you did not – click away after hearing that Theatrefolk noise because you know that the interview was over because you are not going to want to miss out on this week’s in-depth blog post which you can find on our website, www.theatrefolk.com/blog, and also on our Facebook. This is a mega monster because we are offering a free PDF download of forty-one pages of tongue-twisters.
If you use tongue-twisters as warm-ups, if you use them as part of your rehearsal process, if you use them in the class as ice breakers, if you use them in improv, oh, you will not want to miss this document – forty-one pages of tongue-twisters. I have to believe that every tongue-twister ever said out loud is all in this one place just for you. As I said, go to our website, www.theatrefolk.com/blog and get this download. Do it.
Lastly, where, oh, where can you find this podcast? We post new episodes every Wednesday at theatrefolk.com and on our Facebook page and Twitter. You can find us on youtube.com/theatrefolk. You can find us on the Stitcher app AND you can subscribe to TFP on iTunes. All you have to do is search on the word Theatrefolk. And if you’re over there, flash us up a review, give us a little insight into what you think about what we’re doing. Maybe what we can do better. Feedback is always, always, always welcome.
And that’s where we’re going to end. Take care, my friends. Take care.
Music credit: “Ave” by Alex (feat. Morusque) is licensed under a Creative Commons license.
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