Interview witH
Anna  Ziegler and Susan  Stroman

The following is a lightly-edited transcript of a conversation between Williamstown Theatre Festival Artistic Director Mandy Greenfield and Photograph 51 Playwright Anna Ziegler and Director Susan Stroman. To listen to the conversation, click play, above.

 


Mandy GreenfieldAnna, talk to our listeners about who Rosalind Franklin is, what drew you to her, and what inspired this play.

Anna Ziegler I was one of many who had never heard of Rosalind Franklin, until relatively recently, when a small theater commissioned me to write a play about this particular scientist, and two other scientists, as well. This was, I guess, about 10 years ago now. I was a little bit daunted by the assignment to write about three female scientists, because I am not a scientist, nor was I ever particularly comfortable in science class. But I didn't want to pass up a challenge, essentially. So I started to do research into these three women, and it became immediately apparent that Rosalind Franklin was the most interesting to me. She was, in some ways, dramatic gold, because she's a character, who, while she has incredible abilities—she's really a genius biochemist in her time—she also had major character flaws. So, from a dramatist's point of view, that's great. She was someone who was both brilliant but also got in her own way. And I thought she was a great lens through which to investigate gender at that time and certainly the world of science, but, I think, the world of collaboration in general. I found her personality just inspiring that this brilliant woman could get so far in her field at that time, in the 50s, and yet be sort of hampered by the same things that got her as far as they did. Her determination and her brilliance also made her stubborn and guarded. She was just a very complicated character, and I'm so glad that I have gotten to know her in the way I have, and I hope that other people will get to know her too.

Mandy Greenfield She was, of course, a British chemist and x-ray crystallographer who was working at King's College, if I'm not mistaken, in London in the 50s, and was actually central to the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953. And yet she is unknown, by a large measure. She's not a figure we learned about when we grow up. She is not a central character in the story of history—scientific history—with regard to how we have come to understand the basic structure of our DNA. Stro, talk a little bit about what drew you to wanting to tell her story.

Susan Stroman  I loved the play when I read it because Anna has written it in a very poetic way. Of course, I'm a visual person, so when I read the play, I could immediately visualize it on stage with lighting, everything, because I find it very poetic and beautiful. But also, it's exactly what Anna was saying about this woman: I was so attracted to knowing more about her and felt it was important to know about her. And you're right, Mandy, when you said that we don't know her name like we would know Watson and Crick and Wilkins. But the fact that Anna wrote this play about this woman who really discovered DNA—I was attracted to it to explore her more, to learn more about her, and also to dive into that world of science.

Mandy Greenfield This production, conceived for the Williamstown Theatre Festival on a stage, obviously interrupted by a global health pandemic, and conjoining our forces with Audible, made this as an audio offering. Can you each talk a little bit about what attracted you to doing it in this form and how you hope this platform will work for this story?

Anna Ziegler I guess to start I would say, it wasn't an incredibly daunting idea because this is a very, as Stro said, kind of language-heavy play, and a play that I always thought would translate okay into this medium. So really it was kind of a gift to get to experiment with it in this way and to see if that hunch is true. Obviously, we're devastated that the production didn't happen this past summer. But I think the fact that you, Mandy, and Williamstown and Audible were able to give us this pivot so quickly, just gave us structure and hope over the intervening months—the ability to keep making something. That has been crucial for me on a personal level, but it also allowed me to work with these amazing artists—Stro, obviously, among them. I felt very grateful and honored to get to work with her on this and how she was able to get these amazing performances from these actors without ever being in a room together. You know, it was a very fast rehearsal process and it required real shorthand with the actors, and just being very clear, always, and she knew what she wanted and was, in the spirit of the play, very collaborative, which I was also grateful for. So, I would say we had a wonderful experience that we're incredibly grateful for.

Susan Stroman As artists during this pandemic, to be able to do what you do and go forward and keep creating is very important, and it allowed us to be with these incredible actors for two weeks—these actors to play these very important parts. When we first started this—the idea of doing it over Chime—I thought, how are we going to pull this off? But, in fact, doing it over Chime was a wonderful way to create because you're so close with the actors; you're so close to their face. It's very intimate. You know right away if someone's understanding you or if they need more information from you because you are so close—it's just you and that actor. We also had the best actors in the business, I have to say: Anna Chlumsky playing Rosalind Franklin and David Corenswet as James Watson, Stephen Kunken as Don Caspar, Aasif Mandvi as Francis Crick, Omar Metwally as Maurice Wilkins, Benjamin Rosenfield as Ray Gosling—we had an incredible cast. So it was a treat for me to be that close to them. And Chime allowed us to do that. And I wasn't worried about who's coming in what wing or what was flying in; it was all about the actors, all about the characters. Because in the end, the way we were doing this, the words were the star, the play was the star. And getting that right and doing that over Chime was like a great gift to us because as artists we want to go forward in this process—the pandemic has stopped us in some way—but this allowed us to create; this allowed us to do what we do. It was in a different way but thank goodness we were able to create.

Mandy Greenfield So let's talk for a minute about Anna Chlumsky, known probably best for her role on Veep. Absolutely brilliant comedic actress. And, it turns out, also: fierce intellect, unbelievably robust, emotional life. What was it like working with her on this piece?

Susan Stroman She's a marvelous person. The thing is, she's, as you just said, she's so filled with so many interests. So she couldn't wait to do this part. When I met her and she came into my office, she was so excited about the possibility of doing this part and already knew so much about Rosalind Franklin just in her own research. So she was ready to go. But because she has so many life experiences and her acting goes from great drama to great comedy, she's unbelievably well rounded as far as drama. She made, I think, this part have more colors than perhaps it might have been in the mouth of another actress.

Mandy Greenfield  Anna, you've lived with this play for a decade—it comes from you and you've had in your DNA for 10 years. Talk a little bit about where the acts of translation happened in your process from thinking in three dimensions to thinking in the sonic dimension. And talk a little bit about what you learned.

Anna Ziegler I would say I came to appreciate the play in a new way as a kind of piece of music. I think I'm a very aural writer—I do tend to hear things before I see them. So there was—in some ways this brought the process full circle, back to the way I conceived of the play. I think Darron West, who is our sound designer, did such a brilliant job making it this musical tapestry—it really took my breath away. I love the idea that it can exist in this form and people could be on the subway or, you know, walking their dog and listening to this strange piece of music that is this play. That really, really brings me some pleasure. So, I hope that it will lead them down the path of wanting to know more about Rosalind Franklin and maybe more about the Williamstown Theatre Festival too and that it ends up just existing in a whole new way.