Playwright Profile: Donna Kaz

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Playwright- Stamina (Quickies 17, June/July 2015)

BIO: Donna Kaz is a multigenre writer and a feminist activist based in New York City. She has written for Trivia: Voices of Feminism, The Dramatist, Ful Art magazine, Girl Drive Blog, Lilith, The Sun, Gender Across Borders, Women’s Studies Quarterly and Step Away Magazine (Pushcart prize nomination). Her plays and performances have been produced at the New York Musical Theatre Festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Harlem Stage, Trinity College/Dublin, The Spit Lit Festival/London, International Women’s Arts Festival/UK, Women Playwrights International Conference/Sweden, City of Women Festival/Slovenia, Kultury w Poznaniu/Poland and Lincoln Center. For her work creating activist art as the Guerrilla Girl, Aphra Behn, she has received the Yoko Ono Courage Award for the Arts, the Skowhegan medal, an Art is a Hammer Award, a Venus Theatre Award and an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant. donnakaz.com

Where did the idea for your play come from?

The 2016 presidential election when Trump accused Clinton of having no stamina.

What was your favorite moment in working on this piece?

Coming up with the concept. Every year I follow the Everest coverage and when I came up with the idea to put two octogenarians on the Hillary Step, the play just flowed.

What’s the most interesting thing you have found on the street?

A wallet with a $100 gift card in it. It also had a phone number in it and when I called I found out that I was a winner of the gift card – it was planted on the street as a way to advertise.

If you could instantly find something today that you have lost in the past, what would it be?

This question makes me think of about the meaning of the word “lost.” I would like to have moments back, pets who have passed, people who are no longer on earth, landmarks that are gone.

What projects are you currently working on?

I am working on a new book – “9 steps to make a difference with art and activism” as well as traveling the US with my talk “Act Like a Feminist Artist, a Guerrilla Girl Unmasks”.

Finish this sentence- “I love theater that…”

is short.

What was the best advice you were given as a theater artist?

Showing up is key. Opportunity happens when you show up.

What is your favorite and least favorite word?

FAVORITE: Feminism.

LEAST FAVORITE: Patriarcy.

Outside of theater, what are you really into right now?

CrossFit – I have been a crossfitter for 4.5 years.

Any other thoughts you’d like to share? (About Live Girls! Theater, Love, Life, Puppies, …really – anything at all?)

I wrote a musical called “LIVE! NUDE! GIRL!’ which is now a musical screenplay called “KING ME.”