Beach Sloth

The Interview Process: Olivia Lilley

                Olivia Lilley is an up and coming playwright. People got to step up their game to compete with Lilley’s tough as nails game. In her most recent play ‘THAT what makes her an icon’ she kicks out the un-metaphorical jams. Beach Sloth was fortunate enough to sit down with this rising-ass star and ask her a few deep personal questions about her views on art and shower curtains. 

Question 1: What makes someone an icon?

A person becomes an icon when young people start aspiring to become them when they grow up.

Question 2: Why do you work with this specific format? Why not poetry or prose? Why plays?

I like the playwriting because it allows for multiple people to experience something at the same time and watch other people experiencing it around them. Like everybody is taking a shit together. When I was little, I thought doing things in groups was just awful. It took forever for a group to leave and actually go someplace. I much preferred doing things alone. But sometimes, like at the midnight showing of one of the Harry Potters, being in a group was the most powerful thing in the world, experiencing something altogether. So like being in love, its highs are HIGH and its lows are LOWS. I guess that’s how I like my art.

Question 3: The play takes place in several different cities. Is this a way of saying all of America’s youth is the same?

I wanted to write a play that would be a “My Generation” play. I was looking to the film “Reality Bites” as inspiration. I feel like, in the 21st century, it would be appropriate for stories in multiple cities to intersect the way people in the same apartment complex in the 90’s did. The world is much smaller. I wanted this to reflect that. Also, I don’t necessarily think all youth are the same, but I do think that a computer programmer and a singer songwriter from the Mountains of Virginia have a lot in common.

Question 4: Hey baby

Hey

Question 5: Do you think love is a mostly sad or happy experience?

Like I said, love is full of very high highs and very low lows. Or maybe that’s just being young and infatuated. I don’t know if I have ever been “in love”. But I have certainly been young and infatuated.

Question 6: Billy Joel plays in the background in one particular scene. Is there another non-Billy Joel song you could have used?

I love the phrase “When will you realize Vienna waits for you?” It is such a positive message. Like if you have a dream, you will achieve it. You just have to decide when. I think more people should think like that. If they did, more would get done. So no, I don’t think there’s another song that could go there.

Question 7: Is partying a major part of your life?

I used to get paid to party. I was a club promoter. Usually I am the first one who falls asleep at the party. But occasionally, I’m the last.

That’s when I’m not “on the job”.

Question 8: Are you a punk rock kid?

I wish. No, unfortunately, I was a musical theatre kid.

Question 9: What do you miss most about your childhood?

I miss not having to work a day job.

Question 10: What art movements are you most excited for in the future?

Alt lit. 

Question 11: If you could have an ideal shower curtain what would it look like?

I used to have the ideal shower curtain. It was Gene Kelly’s shadow during singing in the rain, aqua colored, frolicking amongst falling aqua colored droplets.

“Singing in the rain”

I want my play to give people a hug - Olivia Lilley

THAT’S what makes her an Icon by Olivia Lilley

                In ‘THAT’s what makes her an Icon’ there’s a bunch of disappointment. This is known as ‘growing up’. None of the people in the play appear to be happy. Rather they have holding patterns. Each one sort of circles around what they are supposed to do or not do. Hopes are brought up over and over again. Occasionally these are teased for a little bit. People hook up. For millions of twenty-somethings hooking up and hope is all that can be managed. Everything else is so far away. 

                Young bastions are shown throughout the country. Whether it is New York, Chicago, Atlanta or the Bay Area, these areas attract talent. The problem is whether or not the talent can meet its full potential. Generally it doesn’t. Olivia’s unfortunate characters try really hard to make it right. They listen to a lot of music. In fact one of the strains that draw all of these characters together is the love of music. It is in the background, whether punk or rap or something in between (though punk beats out Billy Joel any day of the goddamn week). Wherever they are music is the thing that pulls the people closer together whether in a physical sense (like in Chicago) or simply having it as a low-intensity background (like with Roar’s work in Atlanta, with the constant singing and performing). 

                The discussions are virtually absurd. Yet this is how people talk. Most conversations deal with the everlasting pop culture. For these artists (because they all are artists in their own way) the pervasive pop culture is unavoidable. Occasionally if they are successful enough they can elude it, like Craig does with his copy of Yeats. Sometimes they hate it. ‘Vogue’ Madonna’s big thing bothers two particular characters. Other characters are bothered by being a part of this massive machine, with over two hundred million votes like in Roar versus Avril. 

                Legacies loom over some of these characters. Others try to create legacies. Ian and Dave both know exactly how unlikely it is that either of them will have a legacy. Dave says as much while he watches as an old man performs on stage. William wants to be left alone about it. All William wants is to have his private past kept private. Whenever anybody brings it up he appears to get a tad bit uncomfortable. 

                Relationships are the saddest things about growing older. Here people see themselves getting pulled away. Some make it. Most don’t. They exist to comfort one another. They hug one another. All they want is a tiny sliver to show they succeeded in a small fashion. Many of them hope for something better but get sidetracked. One of them literally is sidetracked when their van breaks down and they are forced to settle down. Meanwhile others try to take advantage of a good thing, or grow crazy when that good thing never happens.

                ‘THAT’s what makes her an Icon’ is about youth. The youth are doomed. Yet it never feels hopeless for Lilley’s characters. Optimism for the future shines through and by the end of the play it feels earned. Characters make it not by what happens but by how they deal with it. And that’s as honest as it gets.