This week, JustArts spoke with John Schnorrenberg '14 who wrote and directed a play that premiered on Friday and ran to Sunday in the Shapiro Campus Center Theater.

JustArts: Can you discuss the inspiration for your show?

John Schnorrenberg: I was procrastinating (that seems to be how a lot of things start for me)... on a project I had for a playwriting class and I was supposed to be writing a monologue. I saw this Charles Manson video ... he said something that really drew me in, and that got me [thinking about] Ted Bundy. I did a lot of research on Ted Bundy. And something about it really captured me. It wasn't so much about Ted Bundy as the women in his life-one in particular who he was dating for a long time, a co-worker of his. [She] had been working with him at the Seattle Police Department and he got married to [her] during his trial for murder. That screamed to me "this would be a great drama, this would be fantastic as a drama." So I had my final project for this class in mind ... and I wrote a monologue about Ted Bundy murdering a woman. I was excited to see all the gasps and horrors in class. Instead ... people laughed. And that was off-putting at first but the more I thought about it the more I thought that this is where I should go with it. So it went away from Ted Bundy and just to the generalized idea of a romantic comedy about a serial killer and a police detective.

JA: How did you balance the comedic and heavy aspects of the play?

JS: I think the heavy topic is more in the subtext. There are a couple of times where [the heavy topics come] out in a very obvious way such as some of the murders-to really reinforce the point that "this is not a good person, this is not the way it should be," but for me, I wanted to tell the audience, "this is a bad thing" and then make them forget with light comedy and make them fall in love with the characters and maybe root for the relationship. It has been interesting to see how people respond to that. I've gotten a variety of responses-some people "ooing and ahhing" when they kiss and others laughing because of the absurdity. But I really wanted to bookend it between the comedy with the more intense ending ... showing how this is horrible. Showing [that] at the end, she's happy but how ridiculous it is for her to be happy.

JA: What was your biggest challenge in both writing and directing this play?

JS: Some characters came to me really easily. Some of them, though, were much harder. It was tricky because a lot of my characters are stereotypes- [part of] the whole [romantic comedy] tropes ... and some of those, it was hard to [think about] how much is a stereotype and how much is the real person and also how to make it unique and originally funny and also working to help those actors to find something that I wasn't quite sure how to do myself, that was a bit of a challenge. But I'm happy with the way it came out and I am excited to keep working on it more and also brood more now that I have those voices in my head.

JA: Do you have plans for the play after Brandeis?

JS: I'm going to take a little bit of time back now ... These past two months have been a lot of focusing on [the play]. I'm going to take a breather. But I'm going to return to it. It's been very helpful to have people working very hard, really turning themselves into the characters for a couple hours every night. And with that in mind, maybe bring some of their [improvised] lines in, maybe even ask them for some of their opinions, workshop it more. What I haven't decided is if I want to keep it a play and submit it to different playhouses or if I want to turn it into a screenplay and maybe try to submit it to various film production companies.

JA: Can you put into a few words the message that you hope the audience will get out of this play?

JS: First and foremost, I just want people to be entertained. But, ultimately after that, make sure you always think about what you're watching instead of taking it at blank-face.
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