Q&A: with Playwright Wendy MacLeod

“A Metaphor for Marriage”

Playwright Wendy MacLeod is best known as the author of Women in Jeopardy! (an MRT audience favorite from the 2016-17 Season) and as a writer for the TV cult sensation “Popular.” She has also earned acclaim and awards for the plays Schoolgirl Figure, The House of Yes, The Water Children, and Juvenilia. The film version of The House of Yes, starring Parker Posey, won the Sundance Award and international acclaim. A professor at Kenyon College and Northwestern University, MacLeod regularly writes for The New York Times, Salon, McSweeney’s, The Washington Post, and “All Things Considered.”

What inspired you to write Slow Food?

The play was inspired by a family trip to Palm Springs, where we found ourselves waiting endlessly for dinner late at night in a Greek restaurant, trapped there because it was the only restaurant still open. Our waiter was maddening, and yet his need to be king of this very small kingdom was fascinating. I was reminded of how we become our best selves once we’ve been fed.

Is there a message you hope to impart to audiences?

As far as a “message,” I’m with George S. Kaufmann, that “if you want to send a message, call Western Union.”  A comedy
should entertain, and it does that by being recognizable—the audience needs to see themselves in the characters or the situation. I don’t pretend that I’m communicating “important ideas.” Rather,
I’m creating opportunities for gifted comic actors and allowing an audience to experience the joy of shared laughter.

How would you describe Slow Food?

This play is very much about middle-age and mortality. I call them Woman and Man because the play can’t just be about one couple trying to figure out how to be lovers again after being parents for so long. Over the course of a marriage we all can find ourselves careening between being lovers, co-conspirators, parents, friends, rivals, and adversaries. Being trapped in a restaurant, waiting to be fed, is a metaphor for marriage.