At the PWC this week: Erik Ehn

2015-16 McKnight National Residency and Commission recipient Erik Ehn is at the Playwrights’ Center this week for the final workshop of his commissioned piece, Queen. The public is invited to a free reading of this piece on Saturday, June 4 at 3:30 p.m. Learn a bit about Erik in this mini-interview:

How do you approach writing a play with puppets?

With a torch, an ax, a pound of jerky, and a whistle. The torch, because I only know that I’m going in the right direction if it’s getting generally darker, in all senses. The torch is unlit – it reminds me that light is legacy and is only secure within. The ax is for the frozen lake, per Kafka; the work will take some chopping to get at. The jerky is for perseverance – it’ll be a long journey. The whistle is to call for help; the adventure is not survivable alone.

How are art and activism entwined for you?

A play’s an opportunity to invite strangers (and oneself, as a stranger) into ethical complication, where complication equals culpability, entanglement. So – less community organizing than a kind of community formation that leads to radical disorganization, with mutual respect. Anarchy.

Finish this sentence: If I weren’t a playwright I would be…

I’d still be doing what I’m doing, which is falling down through language, in deep dependence on the kindness of strangers.