At the PWC this week: Harrison David Rivers

Many Voices Fellow Harrison David Rivers is workshopping his new play And All the Dead, Lie Down at the Playwrights' Center this week. He is collaborating with director Faye Price and actors Darrick Mosley and Ryan Colbert. Harrison answered a few questions for us:

What are you currently working on?

Plays with jump-roping teens
A tennis icon
And a seriodiscordant couple.
And musicals about a sharecropper with a secret
A man dodging the draft
And a woman falling inlove with a jazz man in Paris.

Why do you write plays?

Because I can't imagine doing anything else.

Who or what inspires you?

Oscar nominated soundtracks
And concept albums
Janelle Monae and Frank Ocean
Wall art/graffiti
Basquiat
Black and white photography
Carrie Mae Weems
New Yorkers on the late night D train
The writings of James Baldwin, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Ellison and Zadie Smith
Kyle Abraham
And Savion Glover

What is your writing process like?

Caffeine-fueled.

What is your favorite writer’s block snack?

Cashews and hummus and red vines. Oh and black olives.

If you could be present for any event in history, what would it be?

Marian Anderson singing at the Lincoln Memorial, Easter Sunday, 1939.

What’s the most valuable advice you’ve ever received?

“Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.”