Dainty Cadaver Playwright Profiles: JULIA LEE BARCLAY (Team C)

This week, we're running a series of profiles of the playwrights for Piper McKenzie's Dainty Cadaver 2012, in which they fill in the blanks in a number of outlandish and unhelpful statements we have provided.

Julia Lee Barclay is an award-winning writer and director, whose work has been produced and published internationally. She recently returned to NYC from London where she lived for 8 years. In UK she founded Apocryphal Theatre (http://www.flyingoutofsequence.org), which evolved from an experimental lab at Camden People's Theatre in London (which was a continuation of labs/workshops she led in NYC from 1997-2001 at The Present Company). She received a fellowship to complete a practice-as-research PhD at University of Northampton, arguing that theater can be an act of philosophy. Many of her plays have been anthologized and six are available online at http://www.indietheaternow.com. She is an adjunct assistant professor at CUNY (Hunter & Bronx Community College) and writes daily on Somewhere in Transition (http://julialeebarclay.blogspot.com).

1. The playwright whose work I’d most like to continue in my own words is BECKETT because I AM LAZY AND THERE WOULD BE SO LITTLE TO ADD EXCEPT PERHAPS… (SILENCE)…
   
   
2. I think that theater in this country needs more TRULY RISKY EXPERIMENTATION and less PREDICTABLE FOURTH-WALL NATURALISM.
   
   
3. If I could steal one character from another play and put them in my own play, it would be THE “SILENT WITNESS WEARING DJELIBA” from BECKETT’S NOT I because SHE IS USUALLY IGNORED AND I WANT TO HEAR THAT CHICK’S STORY.
   
   
4. Some would describe me as the bastard love child of DAVID MAMET and GERTRUDE STEIN.
   
   
5. At times I FEEL DIZZY at THE CHOICE between VIGOROUSLY enforcing WHO SHOULD RID IN THE bathysphere OR ASKING FOR collateral FLOWERS for FREE RIDES and also A FEW SMALL CHILDREN in case of BEING GIVEN EMERGENCY BACK-UP dandelions THAT SIMPLY CANNOT BE SOLD for profit.
   
   
6. I WAS EXCITED BY Dainty Cadaver FOR OFFERING ME CRAZY FUN FREEDOM.
   
   
7. The one thing I think it’s important for audiences to know about me is THAT I DO NOT EXIST.