An Interview with the No Wake Playwright: Erica Berman
ISA (Director for No Wake): Great so we have worked together before at the Children’s Theatre in Madison and I was an Assistant Stage Manager on a few shows that you did.
ERICA: Yeah that I directed at that time and it was just before the Pandemic, so a lot of those shows are kind of forged in our brains, for sure. And it was such a delight to get a call from you and the Commonweal regarding No Wake. It made it all the more special because we had a working history together. Knowing that a script I wrote was going to be in the hands of someone I trusted artistically to make it happen was really excited.
ISA: I just keep getting excited, ooh it’s a Madison playwright, she’s my friend.
ERICA: I think it just goes to show how small this theatre community is. And also how many connections we make by doing this work. I mean because you’re working with so many people, it takes so many people to put on a show, that whether it’s a stage manager or a costumer or an actor or a director, you pass through many many lives. It’s so wonderful when you get to reconnect with a colleague.
So I saw No Wake at the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre in March of 2020, and I saw it because, working with you in February and I’m like, Erica wrote a play, I’m definitely going to go see this, and spend a weekend in Milwaukee seeing theatre. Which I’m very thankful I did cause that was the last bit of theatre that I did see.
ERICA: I have several friends that that was the case.
ISA: Really?
ERICA: Which I think is sort of ironic because No Wake is all about… it takes place outside and it’s all out of doors and about connections. It’s wild that this play about emotionally/socially distancing by accident is the thing that took us into the Pandemic.
To hear the full interview, click here!
