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Moses on Moses
Itamar Moses -- 11/09/2005
 Thanks to an excellent suggestion by Heidi, we present you with our latest installment of our Writer in a Jar interview series: Itamar Moses interviewing Itamar Moses. If this isn't enough Itamar for you, check out the New York Times article about him from November 6th. Or, just look at this picture.
Hi.
Hey.
Are you Itamar?
Yes. Are you? Ahahahahaaa! Hahaha. Ha. Hm. Urgh.
Okay, let's get started. Um. Why playwriting? I mean, seriously.
Why does anybody do anything? I started writing plays to impress girls. One girl in particular, really. I was a senior in high school, it was second semester, I was already into college, just sort of hanging out with my friends, so I wrote a play, all about this guy who was a senior in high school, kind of just hanging out with his friends… It was pretty awesome. I grew up the Bay Area, and I had also just seen Angels in America, at A.C.T. in San Francisco, so this otherwise mundane play about a bunch of high school seniors had this totally unwarranted epic sweep, and all these mystical characters. Actually, I’m relatively sure it was the worst play ever. But, long story short, the “me” character, and the character based on this girl, hooked up, in the play, and then I gave her the play to read. This is the most labor intensive and convoluted way of hitting on someone that you can possibly imagine. But like a month later I lost my virginity. And ten years later I don’t need a day job. So it all worked out pretty great.
Is that story true?
Mostly. Another answer is that I was always interested in writing, from a very young age, but at first I thought I’d write fantasy novels and science fiction, because that’s what I liked to read: Piers Anthony, Ray Bradbury, Orson Scott Card, Diane Duane, Dan Simmons, Susan Cooper. Then, around the age of fifteen, I decided I wanted to write “serious” fiction, so I wrote all of these elliptical, three page short stories, in which absolutely nothing happened. Because that made them literature, obviously. Then came playwriting. Which, as I said, led to sex. So I stuck with playwriting. I actually try not tug on that thread too hard, since it’s a decision that has dominated my entire adult life, and is probably based on almost nothing. Thanks for bringing it up, that’s a big help.
You can’t mean that.
What.
That it’s based on nothing.
Is that a question?
Yes.
When I went to college, theatre became my primary extra-curricular activity. And, unlike other kinds of writing, playwriting felt like something you could actually do, I mean to completion, in college. This isn’t true, of course. Probably what I mean is that it was public as opposed to solitary. There was a theatre “scene.” Full of fun, extroverted, attractive people. I liked the parties, basically. And you could actually write your play, and cast people in it, and rehearse it, and have people see it. Other, more private, kinds of creative expression were less appealing to me at the time. What I realize now is that that kind of attitude accounts for a lot of bad writing.
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