At the PWC this week: Carlyle Brown

Core Writer Carlyle Brown is workshopping his play Down in Mississippi at the Playwrights’ Center over the next few days, in collaboration with director Noël Raymond and actors Mikell Sapp, Adelin Phelps, and Tony Sarnicki. The workshop will conclude with a free public reading on Tuesday, February 23 at noon. Learn a bit about Carlyle in this mini-interview.

Does also being a performer influence the way you write? How so?

Being in performance continually reinforces that the theatrical event is live, moment to moment in real time where anything can happen and you hope to hell it does. The text must support the actor. They must work together to make that moment happen.

What else are you working on?

A play about a peculiar love story between an interracial couple set in West Virginia during the Civil War.

What does your writing space look like?

On and around my desk I have a few tomes to the muse… fetishes that I believe assist me in my work. There is a little stone carved “speak no evil” monkey, a small wood carved Laughing Buddha, a statuette of a Griot playing a Kora, and a picture of my grandmother whose art was life itself.