Where did the idea for Sister Cities come from?
I thought about the worst way to die and what I would do if I had any power to stop it.
Also, my best friend Jill Gascoine is a phenomenal actress in her seventies who was threatening to retire after an illustrious career. I wooed her back with the promise of a "small part" in which she would not have to move. She was intrigued. I wrote the part of Mary for her and, in what will hopefully be a lifetime in the theatre, I can emphatically say that Jill's performance as Mary will always be one of the most incredible performances I have had the luxury to watch.
Even though you live in Los Angeles, Sister Cities ended up at the T. Schreiber Studios in New York. How did that happen? And how involved were you with the production?
Judith Scarpone and I were in the same theatre company in Los Angeles. She played the role of Mary once when Jill was out of town and she was wonderful. She and Terry go way back, so she brought it to the company, who did a reading of it and loved it. Judith played the role in the Schreiber production and was marvelous.
Ironically, in yet another production of Sister Cities (in Burbank) two of Terry's former students were involved — the director and one of the actors. It's a small, small world!
You've said before that your husband first inspired you to start writing. Could you tell us a little more about that?
I was part of a theatre company that was doing a run of one-acts. As a member of the artistic board, I was bringing home crap plays week after week. He finally told me to write a play and submit it. I did, under the pseudonym Naomi Lefkowitz (a name my mother and I had heard on a trip years earlier which had always stuck in my mind) and it was the first play chosen. For years, I did traveling theatre for kids, primarily Shakespeare, and he likes to say that he took me away from being a Shakespearean actress. Hell, I was still playing Juliet at 32…it was time!
You started out in the theatre as an actress. Do you still act, or has writing become your primary focus?
A little bit of both. I love acting, I really do and I do it as much as I can; however, I seem to be much more successful as a writer…so I'm letting that take center stage and act when I can. Luckily, my hubby Mark Troy is an awesome playwright who writes me plays each year for my birthday. His plays invariably get produced, so in the last few years I've had the luxury of being a nerdy orgasmic librarian turned dominatrix, a religious Jew who convinces her goy husband to have a circumcision at forty, and a harried lesbian whose mother has already purchased a family funeral plot for her. I also act in a lot of my own shows. I know that may be considered arrogant or taboo, but it actually really helps me in the writing process to work from the inside out. It most definitely helped me in Sister Cities.
What are the advantages, and potential pitfalls, of having two writers in the house together?
Pitfalls? I feel like the luckiest bastard in the world. Mark is a playwright, screenwriter and, most importantly, a script doctor…which means he can look at stuff other people write, see it from a fresh perspective and instinctively know how to improve upon it. He is a partner; albeit, often a silent one, in everything I do and has enormous influence on my work! Thank God we live in a house and a semi-spacious one. He's a neat freak and I'm a pig. His pristine, sparse and immaculate office is outside in a detached area and my overflowing, over-tchtozkeed office is inside…if we shared a room our relationship would be over.
You were an All-American athlete in college. How did you first become interested in sports? And do you still play anything?
It feels like a lifetime ago. My dad was a huge athlete and got me started at a young age. I was the only girl on a boy's baseball team for years. I played catcher and was very dramatic. I guess that's where my dramatic flair began. I wouldn't just catch the pop ups. I would fling off my mask, turn a few times and no matter where I caught the ball, I would dive into the ground for effect. I stopped playing when they required everyone wear a cup. Sports were always a huge influence in my life; in fact, my parents used to joke that I majored in lacrosse in college. It was a wonderful phase of my life and I met some of the most influential, wonderful and strong women who played lacrosse and field hockey with me. I think a lot of my characters will always be based on piecemeals of my friends from sports. As I never had sisters, the four sisters in Sister Cities are definite conglomerations of my friends Hannah Hope, Keb, Emilie, Ellen, Clair, Steffa, Becca, Schweitz, and Jenn.
The only thing I play any more is ping pong and Scrabble. My exercise is pretty much relegated to walking my greyhound Moses three times a day!
What have you got coming up next?
I'm in negotiations with a few production companies interested in doing the film version of Sister Cities (I polished my screenplay when I was in Edinburgh at the fringe last summer, so it's ready to go). My play The Last Fortune Cookie is being produced by the Sidewalk Studio Theatre in May, I've gotten a commission to adapt Anna Dillon's best seller The Affair into a play, and my play Blind Spot is being workshopped. I also just published a book, Tennis Dates, and have a few TV and film projects in the works with Disney.
Interview with Colette Freedman was conducted by Michael Criscuolo January 2009.