Teaching Artist Leah Reddy spoke with director Eboni Booth about her work on Primary Trust.
Leah Reddy: What is your theatre origin story?
Eboni Booth: My background is in acting. When I was a kid, maybe nine or 10, my mom saw an ad in the local newspaper—Lehman College was having auditions for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was a college production, but they were looking for some actual young kids to play the younger characters. And I got cast in that. And that was sort of my first real introduction to doing a play. I had the experience of a lot of people coming together in a short amount of time trying to make something, and it really lit me up. I think that’s what sort of stuck with me most, and probably what I hang onto now with theater-making: that sense of community and the togetherness of the group effort to make something that wasn't there before.
LR: After that first experience at Lehman, were there any experiences or teachers that kept you going on the theatre path?
EB: I went to sleepaway camp every summer and I would do the musicals there. I don't sing, but they were very lovely and patient with me and would either get rid of my character’s songs or let me talk-sing my way through. I went to LaGuardia, a performing arts high school, and it was an incredible environment where you sort of devote half your day to studying your craft. Being young, being exposed to that kind of work, being taken seriously as a creative person was really, really life changing.
As an adult, I had an acting teacher, Tony Greco, who was the last in a long line of teachers who helped me understand the kind of work that I want to make. There's a lot of fidelity to the truth in his work. And I can see how it affected my approach to acting and writing—I find myself trying to smoke out what feels real, what feels true, what feels like it reminds me of something that I've encountered myself. Tony also helped me resist every urge I had to step over things that were hard or uncomfortable. Developing a tolerance for discomfort has helped me tremendously, both onstage and off, and I have found that an ability to sit with the unknown has deepened my work.
LR: You mentioned starting your career as an actor. How did playwriting become a part of your career?
EB: I felt so lucky to be acting all the time, but to be totally honest, it wasn't quite enough to sustain me. The waiting for auditions, waiting to be chosen—it began to wear me down. Over time, I also found it increasingly tricky, always serving someone else's vision and voice. There was also a practical consideration—I was working pretty consistently Off-Broadway, but I had no money. So by the time I reached my late 30s, I was trying to see if there were other ways I might be able to support myself.
A writer/actor friend of mine, Boo Killebrew, took me out for drinks one night, encouraged me to try writing, and that conversation changed so much for me. I was initially daunted, like, oh Lord, I can’t write a play. But then I started thinking about how much I had learned as an actor. And specifically what I had learned from doing new play development. Workshops and readings teach you so much about how stories get put together and how worlds come alive. And I’d always been a big reader, so writing scripts became a way to stitch together these disparate parts of myself.
I wrote one play, and it wasn’t good at all. And then I wrote another that was a little less dookie. And then I took a bunch of writing classes at Primary Stages’ school, ESPA, and wrote another play that was maybe 8% better. And I kept going. And little by little I got closer to, I don't know about good, but I started to circle around what it was that I wanted to say. I found my voice.
LR: What was your inspiration for Primary Trust?
EB: I worked in bars and restaurants for a really long time as I pursued acting, and I sometimes found it hard to manage my relationship to alcohol. When I was in my 20s, it was very thrilling—shots and making cash every night and feeling like anything was possible after the right number of cocktails. But as I aged, I found that a certain kind of drinking called up my demons in an uncomfortable way. I wasn’t the type to grow a whole new personality when I drank, but I was definitely flooded by my past and my fears for the future in a way that frightened me.
I also saw a lot of regulars as a bartender. I worked at places where we had some people who came in every night of the week, every day of the year. I had a curiosity about their lives. I think I’m drawn to stories of loneliness and people who are trying to do battle, however quietly, with the feeling of being isolated. So it wasn’t conscious, but I think writing Primary Trust was my way to better understand moments in my life where I felt very alone and very sad and often very drunk. Times when I wanted to connect with people but wasn't completely sure how to go about it.
LR: Primary Trust takes place in a suburb of Rochester, New York, and another play you wrote, Paris, takes place in Paris, Vermont. Do you have a sense of what role geography plays in your work?
EB: I'm from the Bronx and have spent most of my life in New York City, but I think there is a part of me internally, a little spiritual piece, that's better suited to a smaller place. I’ve spent a lot of time in the northeast, in towns and small cities in New England and upstate New York, and there’s something about the region that is very evocative to me. The landscape is beautiful and sad—the green of spring and summer, the changing leaves of fall, the bareness of winter. The towns and cities that were once prosperous are now struggling. It gets really, really cold. It can be hard to know what to do with yourself at 4pm once the sun has set.
I think I’m also interested in the idea some of us have that smaller places offer security and stability that big cities don't. In New York City, we kind of know that the debauchery and evil is laid bare—I see 10 private parts a day on my morning subway commute. But in other places, I’m curious about the attempts at concealment and the kind of mysteries that emerge by shoving things into the shadows.
LR: What advice do you have for emerging playwrights?
EB: Finish what you start. It’s hard and painful and, at least for me, I’m always shocked and horrified by how bad a first draft can be. But I have so many half-scripts sitting in drawers, and I don’t think I became a writer until I began to see things through to an end, however bumpy. I think it can build confidence and stamina: okay, I wrote this draft, I don’t want anyone to see it because it’s so flipping bad, but how can I make it better? And then you can maybe start to double down on craft as you figure out how to get this idea to stand up in someone else’s imagination.
Something else that’s helped me as I was starting to write was keeping my envy and self-hatred in check and really trying to be a supportive community member. It's hard, and it's gotten even worse after the pandemic—resources are so limited and we're all vying for the same few spots. But I think that to be generous with other people and to find a way to be generous and patient with yourself as you navigate this complicated industry is a good skill to have.
I'll say the other thing that was probably the most useful was to really use my taste as my guide. I think I spent the first few years as a writer trying to—and this is part of the process, you sort of imitate other people. You imitate people who are better than you, the people you like, the people you've been watching and reading. That’s part of learning, but I think I spent too much time trying to be like other writers and not thinking enough about what I really wanted to say. I wanted to seem smart, I wanted people to love me, but I wasn’t connected to the things that made me want to write in the first place. When I started writing things that were related to what I like to watch and read, when I started writing about the stuff that keeps me up at night, that’s when I started finding my voice.