Interview: Alessandro Camon is Bringing the Urgency of the Climate Crisis to the Stage With SCINTILLA

THE ROAD THEATRE COMPANY is presenting the world premiere of SCINTILLA, written by Academy Award nominated screenwriter and film producer Alessandro Camon, and directed by Ann Hearn Tobolowsky.

SCINTILLA begins previews tonight, Wednesday, April 12, and will officially open on Friday, April 14 at 8pm. SCINTILLA runs through Sunday, June 4 at the Road Theatre, located in The NoHo Senior Arts Colony, 10747 Magnolia Blvd. in North Hollywood.

SCINTILLA follows Michael and Nora, who travel to visit Michael's reculsive artist mother, Marianne, at her home in the edge of the woods in California's Wine Country. As a wildfire rages on, Marianne refuses to leave while unexpected visitors arrive. Tensions arise amid the group, bringing up a complicated family history, and the question of our survival on the planet.

BroadwayWorld spoke with Alessandro Camon about what inspired him to write SCINTILLA, what he loves about writing for the theatre, and much more.

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The Road Theatre Company is presenting the world premiere of Scintilla. I would love to know what inspired the idea for this play.

It was actually a specific event in my life, which happened maybe three years ago. We got a very unexpected origin call from two friends who said, "Hey, we have been evacuated, our neighborhood is on fire, can we come and stay with you?" So, of course we said, "Yes, come on over. We don't have a very large house, but we'll make it work, and it will be fun." So, they came over, and they brought their four dogs - our dog was thrilled, our cat was furious. But the experience was fun and surreal. Every night we would have dinner and open a bottle of wine, and have fun, and the dogs were in heaven, but at the same time everybody was watching the news, "Is the house going to burn? Do we have a place to go back to?"

So, that experience kind of planted the idea in me, this is the new normal, this is life in California, we live with this strange combination of resilience- which is built in, that is what people living here have in their DNA so to speak- and denial at the other side of the spectrum. And so, it seemed to photograph a moment in time that is relevant for everybody, even outside California. Ultimately, the play is about fire, but it's really about the climate crisis, and how we are living in this suspended moment in which we know that something really, really bad is going to happen, and we know that the clock is ticking, and that very urgent action is needed, but at the same time, human nature and larger economic forces conspire to drown this awareness with denial.

I would love to learn more about your writing process since you write both for the stage and for the screen. What was your writing process like for this, and does it change much depending on if you're writing for the screen or writing for the stage?

Yes, it changes a lot. I find that writing for the stage is a lot more fun. It's really liberating for me because it's not a committee process. If you're working in movies, you have to be a team player. And there is something great about that, I like doing that, I like collaborating with a director, and with actors. But at the same time there can be something stifling about it. When you're dealing with very long, very laborious development processes in which 20 people have an opinion, executives, producers, marketeers, there is something about that that can squeeze the joy out of it. So, if you write for the stage, the project is more streamlined. The voice of the writer is traditionally more respected. And so, for me, it's always very liberating.

Also, I think writing for the stage is more of a character-driven and dialogue-driven type of writing, and writing for the screen can be that, but it tends to be also very story-driven, structure-driven. And I'm a character-driven writer, so I like to build a story from the inside out. I always start with a character, 'What's happening to this person?' 'How do they feel?' 'What do they think?' So, I find writing for the stage very congenial. And also, in my limited experience writing for the stage, because I've only written two plays, it's always been quick. I wrote a couple of plays and they got to the stage relatively quickly. This one, Scintilla, should have been quick, it was actually ready to go before the pandemic. But then all stages went dark, we had to let it go into hibernation for a couple of years. Other than that it would have been quick.

Were you involved with the rehearsal process at all? And knowing that it was supposed to be presented three years ago, what has it been like now to see Scintilla come to life today?

I am involved to a point. I don't want to overstay my welcome, so it's not like I'm always there looking at what they do. But I went a few times, I talked to the director, I talked to the actors, it has been a collaborative process. And it's just a fun process. It's great, I love to see something come to life. Again, it's not something that easily happens with films. I've had that experience on a couple of films that turned out well, The Messenger, and the latest one, The Listener, which Steve Buscemi directed, and it's great, it was so collaborative, and so welcoming. But that's not often the case, it's more the exception than the rule. Usually the writer gets invited to the set begrudgingly, and nobody really needs to know what the writer thinks about the scene as it's being shot [laughs]. So, with the play it just feels easier. And I've had a great time seeing it come to life.

What are you most looking forward to with the world premiere of Scintilla?

Well, I am a novice when it comes to the theatre. I am under no illusion about that. I make my living writing for screens, and theatre is something that I started doing for fun, for curiosity, and also for frustration, because getting movies made is so hard. So, I haven't done a lot of it, I don't know all that much about it, and when I started I actually did have a bit of a prejudice about it, because my mind frame was always, "If it's not recorded, if there is no actual film or digital record, something that is permanent, what a waste, you just do it and it's gone." It was obviously a silly prejudice because if the play is good, it can live forever and be constantly reinterpreted and rejuvenated.

But what I was really missing until I actually started writing plays, is the emotional experience. The emotional connection between live performers and a live audience makes the work come alive in ways that movies and television cannot. Movies and television are great for other reasons, but that lived experience, that live emotional connection is incredibly powerful. And so, that's what I look forward to. I look forward to hearing the words, seeing these characters embodied by actual human beings in front of actual human beings without the mediation of technology.

What do you hope that audiences take away from this play?

The play is about fires in California, and it's about a group of people in a house, which is threatened by fire, and the fire is getting bigger, and it's getting closer, and at some point these people have to decide, "Should we get the hell out of here?" And do they even have time at that point to get out of there? What's going to happen? So, I hope that people will take onboard what that experience represents, even if they haven't lived it themselves, and hopefully never will. I want them to put themselves in that situation and feel the urgency of the climate crisis. It's one of those things that is very hard, to actually force yourself to action, because no single event is going to precipitate that crisis, no single action you can take is going to make a difference. Just like no single cigarette is going to kill you. It's a cumulative thing. It's very hard to decide, "Okay, I'm going to change my life, I'm going to take these actions."

So, how do we get there? Well, I think one of the ways that we may be able to get there is by actually telling and sharing stories that move us emotionally. That's the goal, that's the ambition. And also to deal with the unnamed feelings that we are beginning to feel. There are names for them, climate grief, climate anxiety, people are coming up with definitions, but most people actually haven't heard those words, they feel the feelings. Suddenly the seasons are off, and the bees are gone, and the birds are gone. So, you have all these experiences, and you feel all these feelings, and we still don't have the language. So that's another thing that I hope that people take away from the play, that we actually all feel those things, and it's up to us to create the language, to share it.

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