Super-happy with this interview dramaturg Marissa Skudlarek did with me about “Three Little Dumplings Go Bananas.” She asked great questions and made me sound really smart. In the Dumplings interview we talk about sequels, television, the dumpling play that came to be, and the dumpling play that almost was. Check out this exchange:
Marissa: Your nascent media empire is called Better Than Television, and you tweet as @WayBetterThanTV. Television is also a leitmotif in the “Dumplings” plays – Daddy is always watching TV, the characters talk about the life lessons inherent in such classic sitcoms as Full House, and “Bananas” features a magical TV Guide. Clearly, you have a very complicated relationship with the boob tube. How has television influenced your writing and your worldview – for better or for worse?
Megan: Television is the dominant mode of fantasy in our lives, the externalized imagination that glows in our homes. We all live in the constant presence of a machine that feeds us dreams; I don’t know how any writer can not be obsessed with it! Statistically, the average American has their TV playing for between 4 and 5 hours a day. That’s a lot. TV may be shrinking in importance, though, as more interactive narrative mediums emerge — I write game stories by day, and that industry is exploding — so, as a culture we are on the cusp of something “better than television.” We are starving for that evolution, for a new leap forward in how we experience our daily stories.
If TV is on the way out, then I am really part of the Television Generation: the generation that’s watched more TV for more hours every day, for more of our lives, than any other group of people ever have, or ever will have, watched. That’s our place in human history, and if I didn’t grapple with it in my work somehow, I’d feel dishonest.
Pretty legit, huh? Check out the full interview.
(Pro-tip: Marissa does her erudite-yet-kicky blogger thang over at Marissabidilla.)
-Xoxo Megan