Krista Boehnert
Episode 71: Krista Boehnert
Krista Boehnert is the author of two distinct plays in our catalogue – Have You Heard? and Puzzle Pieces. Both plays are completely written in monologue form. Listen to Krista talk about her writing process and how her sister was a big help in the development of her plays!
Show Notes
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Episode Transcript
Welcome to TFP, the Theatrefolk podcast. I am Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Hello, I hope you’re well, thanks for listening.
So, we have full-on winter here in our neck of the woods. We’ve got icy roads, we’ve got a blanket of, oh, that white stuff everywhere. Although, because I live in a very small community, it really is the prettiest sight of winter – the sun is starting to set and it’s just making, well, it’s making all the snow sparkle. That’s how we describe it, it’s all very sparkling and clean and Norman Rockwell-like. Not like the dirty, slushy winter I remember from living in Toronto.
So, that’s very nice to look at. It’s not that nice when you’re trying to negotiate the roads. It’s kind of an interesting game of who’s going to get their streets plowed first and, when I’m trying to go for a run, looking for dry pavement, you know? But those are really the very tiny, miniscule problems I’m dealing with right now so I think I can handle it. I know I’m pretty sure I can handle it.
So, today we have another Theatrefolk author interview, this time with Krista Boehnert who has two plays with us – Have You Heard and Puzzle Pieces – and both plays are unique because they are written entirely in the monologue format. I love that and I love having that available to you guys and we’re going to get into that.
But, frankly, I was just so tickled to be able to sit down with Krista and have a talk. She’s been with us for a number of years. Her plays have been in our catalog for a while but, you know, she lives way over on the other side of the country and we have never seen each other, we’ve never sat down face to face, and before this, never even spoken. You know, it’s through the wonder of technology and the internet that we are able to do business but also to do this interview, and I’ve been loving doing these interviews. I love getting to know the Theatrefolk playwrights on a personal level through this podcast, and I hope that you are too. I just did another one with an author that’s going to be posted in January and it was downright fascinating. I just love it.
So, here we go. Let’s get going with this one.
Lindsay: Hello there! I am super-thrilled to be able to talk to one of our playwrights today, and we have on the podcast Krista…Krist… [laughs] Krista Boehnert!
Krista: [Laughs]
Lindsay: I was so focused on your last name I [laughs] went and goofed up your first name.
Krista: No worries.
Lindsay: Krista Boehnert, how are you?
Krista: Good, thank you. Thanks for having me.
Lindsay: Awesome. Now, where are you located in the world?
Krista: I am on Vancouver Island. I live in Victoria.
Lindsay: Oh. Do you like Victoria?
Krista: I do actually, except I find the winters a little bit hard because they’re very overcast for months on end.
Lindsay: Mm-hmm.
Krista: Mm-hmm.
Lindsay: You get lots of rain, I imagine.
Krista: Absolutely, yes.
Lindsay: And what I want to start with is just sort of what brought you to Theatrefolk. What made you stick your place and send them across the waves and…the waves – the Internet, and just sort of send your stuff to us? How’d you find out about us?
Krista: I was researching companies that specifically focused on young adult material, so basically high school plays was what I was looking for for publishing companies. So that was sort of my initial reasoning for contacting you guys. Looking at your catalogue already, it seemed like my pieces might be a good fit for what you guys had.
Lindsay: Yeah.
Krista: And then once we established a relationship, I was just really impressed with a lot of kind of the innovative stuff that I think you guys do in terms of downloads and you had the Script Bank for a while and just a lot of different ways of getting plays out there for playwrights so that people would have access to them.
Lindsay: Cool. What’s your theatre background?
Krista: I don’t have any formal training in theatre but I did a lot of drama instruction for children and teens when I was doing my undergrad degree. So basically I would go to different small towns in Saskatchewan where I’m originally from, and we would do weeklong camps, drama camps. And sometimes we would develop our own scripts throughout the week and perform sort of a collective at the end for the parents, and sometimes we would work with an established script and cast the play and work madly on a one-act play for a week and produce it over the community. And it was kind of neat because it was a lot of small towns, so not only did you get to know a lot of the residents really well and their parents, but it also was kind of a community event so that people could come out and see live theatre, which sometimes is a bit of a challenge in smaller locations.
Lindsay: Yeah. Is that kind of what drove you to start writing, were these camps, or what drove you to write?
Krista: Um, [laughs] initially my sister, who worked with me on a lot of my projects, she decided that we should perform.
Lindsay: [Laughs]
Krista: So she said, “I’ll get us the gigs but you have to write us the scripts.” So it was kind of one of those older-sibling-mandated things actually that initially…
Lindsay: Holy smokes, that’s a most interesting [laughs] torture from an older sibling!
Krista: [Laughs]
Lindsay: “You must write a play.”
Krista: “You must write a play, and then we’ll go perform it.”
Lindsay: [Laughs]
Krista: So [laughs] initially I started writing, but then I kind of fell in love with it, when I started doing the scripts, so that I started branching off and doing the types of plays that you guys have in your catalog.
Lindsay: What made you fall in love with it?
Krista: Just the ability to tell stories, and I think there’s something really intimate about theatre that you don’t get in other mediums like television or film, which are also great venues for stories. But there’s just something about the theatre that I really like that interaction between the actor and the audience, and being able to convey a story and for the audience to experience kind of that real-time raw emotion kind of right in front of them.
Lindsay: It’s that cyclical thing about what happens on stage gets put out into the audience and then they’re right there to respond to it…
Krista: Exactly.
Lindsay: …and it goes back on stage, and that’s what I like about theatre.
Krista: Yeah. Yeah, I absolutely agree. And some of my early scripts, the ones that I wrote for when we were performing, had a significant amount of audience participation. So it even kind of upped the ante a little bit in that respect, because as an actor you’re starting a dialogue with the audience and they’re actively participating, which was also kind of neat.
Lindsay: So what was it like to write your first play? Like did you have an idea about what it would be like before you started or…?
Krista: In terms of…
Lindsay: Well, what was it like to be a writer? Did you have an impression?
Krista: Not necessarily. I had always kind of I would say tinkered with writing from a really young age, so whether it was like short stories or poems. So it was kind of always something that I did. So it wasn’t a completely foreign concept to me when I sat down to write plays. The thing that kind of enticed me about it was, yeah, I guess the fact that there was the audience and we had the opportunity to kind of really weave something alive that people would experience rather than just coming out through the page.
Lindsay: Do you have any memories of that first audience who saw your first…the first time you saw an audience respond to your work?
Krista: Yeah, actually it was like in terms of as a playwright and not being the performer onstage at the same time. I got the opportunity to see Puzzle Pieces, and it was interesting because the…it wasn’t announced or anything that the playwright was in the audience, which was great because then I feel like you get much more [laughs] of natural reaction to the piece. But it was interesting to, yeah, to experience it where you could kind of hear the audience reacting at different points, whether they were laughing or there would be kind of that you-can-hear-a-pin-drop sort of moment at different points, and it was cool to experience that in a room with the audience for sure.
Lindsay: So let’s talk about Puzzle Pieces. Both your plays, Puzzle Pieces and Have You Heard?, are written in…not unique form but singular form, like they’re told through monologues.
Krista: Right.
Lindsay: And why did you use that doorway for your work, just for Puzzle Pieces?
Krista: Initially, I don’t think it was necessarily a super-conscious decision. When I was working on Puzzle Pieces I had some very specific stories that I wanted to convey, and I would have to say I was probably inspired by some plays that I had seen just over the years, whether they were really versatile one-person shows or whether they were kind of those experimental formats where you have interweaving monologues. And so I thought that I would like to try working in that context rather than doing a piece with a lot of dialogue to try and be able to convey a really compelling story but in sort of an experimental format. So as the pieces developed and the stories came together, there was the challenge of just getting the flow right with the monologues and having the throughline so that you have a coherent story even though it’s pieced together through monologues rather than a dialogue approach.
Lindsay: Yeah, that’s what I think is the real hallmark of both those plays, is that they tell a story, each monologue tells a story, but then the whole thing tells a story.
Krista: Yeah, that is the one…it’s one thing actually, as a writer, I really love just the problem-solving aspect of that as you’re going in and looking at the overall arc as opposed to just within each piece. It has to work singular and throughout. So that’s kind of fun when it’s coming together.
Lindsay: Yeah. Can you remember any difficult moments in trying to solve that puzzle? Was there a moment when a kid came to you in rehearsal and just went, “I don’t…what’s happening?” [Laughs]
Krista: [Laughs] Yeah, what’s happening here. Um, not so much in the ordering of the pieces. I think something that’s kind of intimidating with a monologue-based play is, right, that it is a [laughs] monologue-based play. So a lot of the struggles I remember early on were more in terms of, “Well, what am I supposed to do? Do I just stand here and deliver this monologue?”
Lindsay: Yeah.
Krista: And the actors who aren’t participating, they’re like, “Do I mime stuff in the background? Do I just stare up into space?” So a lot of it is more, um, I remember struggles with sort of staging and figuring out how to approach that versus the actual content of each story.
Lindsay: Cool. What are you working on now? Are you writing now?
Krista: I am writing now, yeah. I’m experimenting actually a little bit with novel writing just for a little bit of a challenge. So that’s kind of what I’ve been working on at the moment. And I am also working on some short festival pieces but they’re sort of like 10-minute plays, kind of the ones that when you go to festival they typically have those showcase moments where it’s shorter pieces and they have a bunch of groups come up. So I’m working on some of those, but again they tend to be in the experimental format, sort of more of interwoven monologues rather than dialogue.
Lindsay: Why do you think that speaks to you, because that seems to be your wheelhouse?
Krista: It seems to, yeah…
Lindsay: Which is cool. I like it, so.
Krista: Yeah, I’m not sure. I think it speaks to me as an audience member, so that might be part of the reason why I’m so attracted to it. And I also…I just like that concept of the narrator, you know, how much can you trust the narrator? And it’s playing with perspective a little bit, you know, how they’re conveying…and this one comes through I think more in Have You Heard? than in Puzzle Pieces, but is their take on the story really how it occurred or are they putting their own spin on it and…
Lindsay: Mm-hmm.
Krista: …and kind of leave those seeds of doubt for both the audience and the actor to play around, and I like to leave them some freedom and space to move with the story in a direction that they would like to.
Lindsay: Well, because then we’re not dealing with perfect, cardboard cut-out, shiny characters telling a linear story. There’s actually some, oh, I don’t know, death and…
Krista: [Laughs]
Lindsay: …some growth and some questions.
Krista: That’s true. So it’s not all tied up in a bow at the end.
Lindsay: [Laughs]
Krista: So you kind of have to wonder, with Have You Heard? in particular, it’s like, “Hmm.” [Laughs] “What exactly did transpire here?”
Lindsay: Was there a specific inspiration for Have You Heard? Because it’s a very specific story, Have You Heard? being about a teacher who is wrongly accused of inappropriate action. Where did that come from?
Krista: Um, kind of came from two places. When I myself was in high school, there was an accusation against a teacher, so I kind of have that experience, that context of sort of what happens and kind of how the rumor mill got started. So that was probably some of the inspiration for it. And then as I got older, again my sister, she is a teacher, and so she’s witnessed or experienced sort of similar accusations of colleagues in her career. And just having to navigate through that as an adult, you definitely notice sort of different nuances in situation. With respect to the situation when I was in high school, in the end it was determined that the accusation was false. And so that was something that came out much later, but it wasn’t…people weren’t cognizant of it at the time like they are in the play.
Lindsay: Hmm. On your…just in terms of having this teenage voice that you…both Puzzle Pieces and Have You Heard? are very much entrenched in the teenage voice, and you say on your bio that being an awkward 14-year-old girl at heart that you have fun writing for young adults. And why do you think it’s important to key in to what it means to be a teen to write for them?
Krista: I think it’s really important just because I think young adults do have a unique voice, but I think also they’re often underestimated in terms of depth, you know, how much depth they have or perception of a situation. I think it’s easy to, the older you get, perhaps to sit back and dismiss someone who is younger, their opinion. So I think it’s really important that the voice rings true, and because you are putting young people in those characters onstage it has to resonate with them. If they’re looking at the monologue that I’ve written and are thinking, “I would never speak like that. Those aren’t words I would use,” or “Those aren’t emotions that me or any of my friends ever feel,” that authenticity doesn’t ring through, and then the story won’t fly.
Lindsay: It’s always very clear when a piece is written by an adult trying to be a kid as opposed to just trying to find that authentic voice, I think.
Krista: Yeah, I agree, definitely. You can always tell the difference for sure.
Lindsay: Do you ever feel like a stigma, the stigma that kind of sometimes comes when writing for youth that it’s not the same as being a professional writer? Has that ever come your way?
Krista: Occasionally. It’s funny, I’m trained professionally as a librarian actually, and so often I’ll get asked what I read and I predominantly read young adult, whether it’s plays or fiction. And yeah, there’s definitely…I would say there is [laughs] definitely that stigma out there about it, and yet I think in recent years it’s really sort of coming into its own and I think it is gaining more respect, largely due to a lot of really big novels that have crossed over…
Lindsay: Yeah.
Krista: So I think it’s becoming less and less, but I definitely, yeah, have experienced people saying similar things like that you are just writing for young adults kind of…
Lindsay: What draws you to read young adult? What do you like about that world?
Krista: A lot of times I really feel, if it’s well done and it’s really authentic, I just feel like stories are really compelling, and oddly in some ways I feel like I can relate and this is kind of where the awkward 14-year-old thing comes [laughs] in. I can relate a lot of times. A lot of the materials that are aimed at young adults I feel are coming-of-age stories or struggling with who you want to be or how you want to change the world or kind of some of those big questions that we all deal with, but I think perhaps as we get older we become less comfortable being forthright that we are struggling with those things.
Lindsay: Right.
Krista: So I think that’s kind of what draws me to it, is just the open and honest aspect of it.
Lindsay: Teenagers are nothing but open, open about the struggle. [Laughs]
Krista: [Laughs] …all the time. [Laughs]
Lindsay: Okay, so what’s your favorite? What’s your favorite young adult work?
Krista: Oh gosh, [laughs] that’s a really tough question.
Lindsay: Okay, what are you reading?
Krista: I could answer with a favorite pick that I just read recently.
Lindsay: Do it.
Krista: It’s a novel by Jay Asher. It’s called Thirteen Reasons Why. Not unlike my plays, in the sense that it’s a young woman leaves behind a series of audio cassette tapes that she’s recorded explaining the 13 reasons why she’s committed suicide. So it’s a monologue of her essentially, and it’s interspersed with the person who’s a monologue of the person who’s listening in on the tapes because she left them behind for him.
Lindsay: Wow.
Krista: Yeah. [Laughs]
Lindsay: Well, right there, that’s the epitome of we think that teens are shallow and materialistic and yet here’s a…that’s a pretty deep story, you know?
Krista: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it’s really well done in the sense that, you know, not everyone’s likeable by the end. You’re right there with the character who’s struggling with those decisions that make suicide a lot of the time, but then occasionally you aren’t with her, and I think that’s really authentic too in the sense that everyone’s shades of gray.
Lindsay: It’s funny, that’s one thing that comes up sometimes when we have to combat against administration where they get really antsy about unlikeable characters who do unlikeable things, and it’s like, “Have you not stepped outside your office? This is the way we act, you know.”
Krista: Absolutely, and I think that’s the strong choice and the right choice to show people onstage that are like the ones that are wandering in the hall of the high school, because not everyone…you know? People have bad days, people have good days, [laughs] sometimes they get into shenanigans, and to always kind of show that stark character of the good teenager is not real.
Lindsay: [Laughs] Well, it’s just…it’s those shenanigans, you know.
Krista: Mm-hmm.
Lindsay: They’re happening everywhere.
Krista: Yes.
Lindsay: Okay. So as you have spent the time, spent years writing, what do you think you’ve learned the most about the writing process?
Krista: That’s a tough one. Probably that I’ll never be completely satisfied with my final work. [Laughs]
Lindsay: Yeah.
Krista: I don’t know if that’s [laughs] necessarily a good thing to learn, but I think over time, too, I’ve also become a little more gentle with myself in the sense of knowing that it’s always an evolving process. So there’s always I guess the hopeful side of that equation, is just that there’s always room to dig deeper and to make it better, make it more authentic and real each time you go out.
Lindsay: It’s kind of hard, eh? We want to strive to make it the best but it’s like, well, if we keep doing that, then it’s just going to be a vicious cycle forever and ever.
Krista: Yeah. Well, I think it goes back to what we were just saying. I mean we’re all imperfect by nature so that I don’t think it’s ever possible to write the perfect play and have the…as long as you can get some really great moments and share some really great stories, you know, for the majority of the play, [laughs] then I think you’re doing well.
Lindsay: So what do you do? How do you get yourself to move away from a script and call it done?
Krista: To let go?
Lindsay: Yeah.
Krista: Um, typically what I’ll do is I kind of get it to the place where I feel really solid about it. I’m not a huge fan of test readers or workshopping right at the sort of beginning of the process. I don’t know why, [laughs] but I’m not. So I get it to a place where I think that it’s where I would be willing to take it to workshop or put it on a stage, and then I will literally just walk away from it for around six months so it’s no longer fresh, and then I’ll go back and take a look. And often there’s less that I will change than I think I’ll have to, but usually I do make some changes at that point, and then that’s when I tend to bring in new eyes and new voices to get some feedback on things. Because sometimes it’s just little things, little inconsistencies that having worked with the script so long you don’t even notice anymore, or sometimes someone will come forward with a really big issue [laughs] that you have to deal with. But yeah, initially I’m kind of, you know, the stereotypical writer in a closet [laughs] for the first part.
Lindsay: [Laughs] “Don’t talk to me. Don’t touch me.” I think that the best thing you can do is walk away from your script for a while, but holy cow, I think six months, that’s really hardcore. That’s good. Like that’s awesome.
Krista: Yeah. Well, by then I’ve sort of, not forgotten…
Lindsay: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Krista: …but I’ve forgotten a lot of the little nuances and it at least feels fresh when I go back to it.
Lindsay: Yeah, well, you’re not inside of it anymore.
Krista: Exactly.
Lindsay: You can sort of take a step away. Do you have the same group of people that you might workshop your work with all the time or do you go to schools, or where do you find people to bring your work to life?
Krista: I tend to lean on my sister, who works in a school.
Lindsay: Ah.
Krista: Yeah. And so, yeah, so it’s, generally speaking, different students just by virtue of the fact that they all graduate and move on and they prefer to work with people who are right in it in the age range that I’m working with rather than working with folks that might have already graduated from high school or going to university theatre groups, because I have access to them quite easily but I tend to rely on my sister who’s quite gracious in helping me out. So that’s generally speaking where I’ll do the workshopping.
Lindsay: Well, I mean, that’s an awesome resource because then the people who are going to perform it are the ones who are reading it for the first time and they’re usually always pretty honest.
Krista: Yeah, exactly, which I really appreciate. I’m not one of those writers that’s so caught up in…like I don’t get argumentative. For me, my goal when I’m trying to tell the story is to, like I say, make it as real and authentic as possible. So when feedback comes, I don’t generally get my back up, and I’m like, “Okay, we’re all working together to get it to this place.” And I’m just appreciative that they feel comfortable being honest because that’s hard to do [laughs] when you’re looking a writer in the face and saying, “This didn’t really ring true for me.”
Lindsay: Well, I’m sure it comes across, because I think it’s a great attitude to have that “feedback is necessary, feedback has to come my way,” and it’s not always going to be a lovefest.
Krista: Yeah, exactly, and for them to just know how appreciative I am of the process because up until that point, right, I’ve been slaving away in a room by myself. [Laughs] So to have people who are even willing to take time and live with it and look at it and give their honest feedback, I’m so appreciative.
Lindsay: Well, and that way too, I mean, you get to know—it’s your mini-audience—how people are going to react and…
Krista: Yeah.
Lindsay: …you can let it go into… And it’s another way to let it go. Once you see it on its feet, I think it’s easier to let go. I don’t know, do you?
Krista: Yeah, that’s true. Once you’ve kind of got it in that place where you can send it out there to the masses, it’s much easier to let go than the initial one, I would say, too.
Lindsay: Well, that’s awesome. Well, this has been a lovely chat. [Laughs]
Krista: Oh, it was great chatting with you.
Lindsay: Yeah, it’s always nice just to kind of, you know, talk about theatre. Why not?
Krista: Yeah.
Lindsay: Actually, we mostly talked about writing. Oh, so here’s a good question to just sort of leave on, is that, what has theatre meant to you? What does theatre mean to you as you’ve been exposed to it over the years?
Krista: It’s huge. I mean, some of my best memories are theatre-based, whether being an audience member being just blown out of the water with what I’m seeing onstage or whether it’s backstage stories of trying to change costumes quickly and [laughs] that kind of thing. So yeah, it’s a huge part of my life in terms of the friendships that I’ve made and all the experiences I’ve been lucky enough to have whether it’s in front of an audience or whether it’s being in the audience or being behind the wings. So it’s something that I can’t imagine not having, and having all the different stories that I get to hear when I’m in the theatre, a different plays, is something that I really, really love.
Lindsay: Absolutely. I agree a thousand percent on that.
Krista: [Laughs]
Lindsay: I can’t imagine my life without a little bit of theatre in it.
Krista: Absolutely.
Lindsay: Thank you so much, Krista. This has been wonderful, and I really appreciate you taking the time to do a little chat.
Krista: Yeah, thanks for inviting me. It was great to finally have a chat with you.
Lindsay: Awesome.
And before we go, let’s do some THEATREFOLK NEWS. So, this month, we’re posting some of our in-depth blog posts on our blog, funnily enough, and also, over on Facebook. Great games for the first week of class, tips for the student actor, the student director, and we want everyone to grab the downloads that go with these posts because some of them will be disappearing in the New Year. They’re going to make their way into an ebook. We just think this is a lot of really great information.
Craig and I have had a great time writing these articles, putting them out there for you, and we want to continue to make sure that they are available and out there. So, right now, don’t delay. Grab them while they are free.
Lastly, where, oh, where can you find this podcast? We post new episodes every Wednesday at theatrefolk.com and on our Facebook page and Twitter. You can find us on youtube.com/theatrefolk and you can find us on the Stitcher app and you can subscribe to TFP on iTunes. If you’re over there and you’ve enjoyed what you’ve listened to, please take a second and throw us up some feedback or a review. We’d really appreciate it. And, over on iTunes, all you have to do is search for the word “Theatrefolk.”
And that’s where we’re going to end as I sit here looking out into our sparkly winter wonderland. Take care, my friends. Take care.
Music credit: “Ave” by Alex (feat. Morusque) is licensed under a Creative Commons license.
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