Dead Brains: Interview with Playwright Erik Champney

“Dead Brains” is a thrilling new immersive play produced as a collaboration between Baker Falls and Knitting Factory. Written and directed by Erik Champney, “Dead Brains” will premiere at the Feverdream Lounge in NYC’s East Village on January 17th. The play focuses on the relationship between Henry and Philly — artist and muse — who have deemed themselves to be idols in their own minds.

Erik Champney received a B.A. in both Theatre and English from Centenary College of Louisiana followed by a M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. He has since gone on to win awards for his writing and was happy to discuss this latest project via an exclusive interview.

Meagan Mehan (MM): How did you get interested in theater and what led you to immersive work, per se?

Erik Champney (EC): When I was five-years-old, my dad took me to see a local children’s theatre production of Hansel and Gretel. Peter Pan Players was doing a musical based on the opera by Engelbert Humperdinck. It was my first time seeing a show. I remember dad had to carry me from the car to my seat in the theatre, as I was recovering from surgery. A muscle deficiency in my legs prevented me from walking until I was three, and that was only after the first round of surgeries; these would continue until I was thirteen. Much of my youth was spent either in hospitals or recovery, but I can walk as a result of that. It’s a miracle, walking.

Perhaps my memory is glorifying the experience of this production of Hansel and Gretel, but I remember it being grandly designed with extraordinary tech. Maybe it’s unusual to hear such a description about a show in Shreveport, Louisiana, but my hometown has a rich and fascinating history in the arts.

When I was nine, my parents enrolled me in weekly classes with Peter Pan Players, which led to a series of wonderful character roles. My experience with the organization peaked when artistic director Isobel Rosenbloom commissioned a full-length play from me when I was only fifteen. I was always writing, even before I could put pen to paper. I clearly remember being four and dictating scripts to my father, who tried to keep up with me as he scribbled onto his notepad. By the time I was fourteen, I’d written three novels before experimenting with plays. Isobel had taken notice of this and began to have me contribute new dialogue to some of the old scripts they recycled every few years. When she was satisfied, I knew what I was doing, she sat me down and told me about an idea she had for a new play. Then she announced she wanted to hire me to write it. And I did.

The show was called Scamp, about the adventures of a suburban dog’s adventures in the big city. It opened shortly after my sixteenth birthday, less than seven months after I’d been hired. During that time, I had a crash course in drafting and revising (and revising) a script. I learned how to collaborate with a great director, and we were side by side throughout auditions, workshops, and rehearsals. We quickly became peers and, to this day, the work we created with each other is something I’m deeply proud of.

Immersive theatre is a genre that has always fascinated me, beginning in undergrad, when I directed Friedrich Schiller’s Mary Stuart in one of our rehearsal studios. To be honest, I got away with a lot that would never be allowed today. The room was filled with burning candles and the stage was treated as a chessboard. The audience sat on the floor around it, almost too uncomfortably close to the action. This was a project for my directing class, helmed by the chair of the theatre department, Robert Buseick. His one note for me was, “Congratulations.” He passed a few years ago, but I have a feeling he would get a kick out of what I’m doing with Dead Brains.

MM: How did you come up with the idea for “Dead Brains”?

EC: The inciting incident was reading Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love. The contentious romance between Mae and Eddie is sexy, and it got me wondering about the power dynamics of relationships between men and women. During this time, I was also neck-deep in seeing a multitude of Italian horror films, many in the very niche but much beloved Giallo subgenre. I was already a longtime acolyte of Alfred Hitchcock’s, but directors like Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Mario Bava, Michele Soavi, and Lamberto Bava added an exciting texture to my self-education. I learned it was more than okay for characters to have weird eccentricities, or to be just plain weird in general. I began to understand the rejection of conventional storytelling can make a thriller much creepier and more surprising. All of this must have been swimming around in my subconscious as I was writing this play because the influence is certainly evident. That I’m gay also found its way into the text, which made everything hotter and, to be honest, more dangerous.

MM: How much research into the human psyche did you have to do for this piece?

EC: I’m an intuitive, empathic person, who grew up surrounded by theatre people. Some of them were wonderful. Many were abusive, emotionally and physically. That’s all I’ll say about that, but my general surroundings provided all the research I needed when it came to manipulation and taboo behavior.

MM: What kinds of works are you drawn to writing?

EC: I’m not into being pigeon-holed. The characters choose me and I tell their stories. I find the basics of this uncomplicated, but writing is a spiritual experience for me. It’s a possession. Once the characters and I have established trust with each other, the work just happens. These are ghosts, visitors who ask me to be their vessel. Sometimes, it’s less asking than forcing.

Nothing I do is genre specific. None of my scripts resemble each other. I couldn’t count how many times I’ve heard each play feels like it was written by a different person. That makes sense to me. With each play comes its own set of ghosts, who become characters, who will be embodied by actors.

I have a dynamic kinship with actors because I am one, although unpracticing. Actors tend to love doing my stuff because, once they’ve opened themselves up to the material, they can feel the ghosts, too. And the ghosts guide us all. Whether they be serious, silly, or somewhere in between, my plays are hauntings.

MM: What kinds of works are you drawn to writing and/or which themes interest you?

EC: There is one element that seems to thread itself throughout everything I do. Trust. The risks and rewards of trusting someone. It seems this theme is a bottomless pit. There’s much to mine from it. I’m not interested in politics or what is deemed to be “right” or “wrong” in society. I’m interested in human beings. Why they fall in love, why they lie, why they tell the truth, why they believe what they believe, why they commit murder. It’s a broad spectrum and a healthy one. The possibilities are endless.

MM: How did you come to partner with Baker Falls and the Knitting Factory?

EC: None of this would be happening if I hadn’t met Jon Pratt, the leading actor in Dead Brains. Last summer, he moved to New York from L.A., where he was mentored by legendary playwright Robert Patrick, who died in April. Robert was the godfather of Off-Off-Broadway and he taught Jon everything there is to know about what was happening in the downtown theatre scene in the 1960s and ’70s. Jon adopted that devil-may-care desire to make wild, untethered art, and he brought this energy with him to New York. We became fast friends. The guy is a walking encyclopedia of underground theatre and the people who created it, and he’s only twenty-eight. It’s mind-boggling. He certainly knows more about it than I do and, perhaps, most contemporary artists, which was a wake-up call for me. Our history, our core, is being carelessly forgotten, and even erased. Everything has gotten so safe, and I’m sick of it.

Jon came upon Baker Falls first and found their Feverdream Lounge. It’s a wild space. Victorian Gothic, brimming with antiques. Spooky and magical. I’d been focused on writing and directing short films for a while and enjoying success from that. Theatre had slipped away from me after a series of difficult collaborations. Let’s be frank, writers are treated like crap. There are a lot of bullies out there who get off on taking advantage of us. We created theatre. We created entertainment. We create these scripts. And yet the disrespect we face remains unfathomable. But Jon was having none of these excuses for not doing theatre.

One night, he slyly brought me to Baker Falls and showed me the space. The second I saw it, I was hooked. I thought, “Goddamn it. I have to do Dead Brains here. And I have to direct it.” Jon and I met with Nick Bodor, the owner of Baker Falls, and asked him if we could do a crazy, fucked up play in the Feverdream Lounge. Nick embraced us with open arms. The trust he’s instilled in us is probably unheard of, especially in New York, but Nick wants to bring experimental, thought-provoking, controversial theatre to the venue. After all, it was formerly the Pyramid Club. Before we knew it, we were coined the first resident play at Baker Falls, reviving a long-lost tradition of performing arts that once thrived in that building.

Sometimes, all you have to do is ask. But you have to know exactly what you’re asking for. We got astoundingly lucky.

MM: How did you secure the space and how did you merge it with the immersive nature of the play?

EC: Baker Falls and Knitting Factory are presenting the play, which means all of our rehearsals are held in the space itself. This is helpful, as the production has been designed specifically for it. What a chore it would have been to rehearse in studios and then insert the play into the space. Considering how crucial that environment is to absolutely everything we’re doing, I can’t imagine it being possible any other way.

I don’t want to give away too many surprises, but the play is uncommonly intimate. People will be close to the action. Very close. It’s a true communion between actors and audience. There’s going to be a lot of intense energy in the room. I’ll leave the rest to the imagination.

MM: What is your favorite part of the play and why?

EC: The play is my favorite part of the play, but this is far and away my favorite experience doing it. I’ve never directed it before. This is my first opportunity to unravel it and take advantage of all the extraordinary feelings, intentions, and physicality in ways that weren’t explored in previous productions. That isn’t a slight on the quality of those versions. They were brought to life by exceptionally talented people who knew what they were doing. But I believe our production of the play is what Dead Brains has always wanted to be. Elevated, melodramatic, scathingly honest, heartbreaking, brutal, and sexy as hell. It’s also extremely funny. There’s a dark carnival vibe to it that I believe will make people’s mouths water.

MM: What memorable feedback have you gotten about this show?

EC: The play is divisive among audiences, but the reviews have always been amazing. Perhaps my favorite pull quote of all time came from the Seattle Review Rag when it was done there:

“Exiting the theater, the crowd around me was buzzing either with talk of the play’s brilliance or their own violent distaste.”

That’s a win in my book.

MM: How do you hope your career continues to evolve from here?

EC: I’m following a path and I trust the path. It brought me to film and it returned me to theatre. This production of Dead Brains is the most positive and fulfilling experience I’ve ever had in the theatre. And I’ve done a lot of theatre. My hope is to keep moving forward with productions. I’m sick to death of endless developmental processes and avalanches of staged readings. It’s boring and usually a dead end. I can respect a reasonable process from page to stage, but another one of my plays has been “in development” for eight years. It’s exhausting and ridiculous.

I’ve reached a point in my life when I take action. I make the work happen. Plays were not meant to be read. Generic sentiment it may be, but it’s reality. Nobody, not even the writer, knows what a play is or what it can do until it’s on its feet. With the help of an extraordinary team of collaborators, I’m putting this piece on its feet, and it’s landing hard. Baker Falls and Knitting Factory have been hands off, creatively. This is what it feels like to be free, and I take that freedom seriously. We’re not being hovered over or smothered, and you know what? That makes us work even harder. It keeps us honest.

MM: What are your ultimate goals for the future and is there anything else that you would like to mention?

EC: Right now, it’s important for me to stay in the moment and be present with my actors and this play. The future will come. What awaits me tomorrow depends on the work I do today. One day at a time. One step at a time. I’m following the path.

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DEAD BRAINS runs January 17 — February 18 at the Feverdream Lounge at Baker Falls (101 Ave A in the East Village). Tickets and information at bakerfalls.com.