Mac Rogers is a playwright I seemed to keep missing — for example, I got back into town just late enough to miss the last performance of Advance Man, for which I had a ticket, and I was completely out of town for the entire run of Frankenstein Upstairs. And yet, I kept hearing great things about his work.

Turns out those things were dead on. Now I’m even more disappointed I missed those previous two shows.

His latest play, which he also stars in, is Ligature Marks, a noir story embedded in a domestic drama with an MMORPG backdrop. It’s not as confusing as I just made it sound. And it’s well-worth your 75 minutes in the theater.

Mac and his co-star Rebecca Comtois, along with Gideon Productions producer Sean Williams, sat down with me after a performance last weekend over a beer in the Alligator Lounge for a long conversation that covered a whole lot of super-interesting ground — and, included a beautifully-worded segment about why and how one can become an effective producer. Essential listening for those of you who want to make your own work.

Listen in as Mac, Rebecca, and Sean discuss playing damaged people onstage, stage names vs. who we actually are, why one shouldn’t hate on what other people like (even if it’s the Twilight series), how to talk down playwrights & directors when they’re freaking out, and creating theatre (and podcasts) as part of the long-term cultural conversation.

“…as a producer…your whole life is storytelling. Your whole life is inventing narratives, your whole life is acting, your whole life is playing characters, so I think for people who don’t like producing, but do like to act and do like to write, I think it’s possible that they’re looking at producing the wrong way…”

(seriously, one of the coolest pieces of advice we’ve gotten on the podcast) Continue reading →

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