Talking with playwright Crystal Jackson about In a Jar…at the Smithsonian

How did In a Jar…at the Smithsonian come to be?
CJ: The title of the show references the urban legend that John Dillinger’s extremely large phallus is in a jar at the Smithsonian (but not on display, sadly). I recently heard that legend for the first time and, of course, had to Google it. There are lots of things reputedly in jars at that museum, and I started thinking about the legend relative to the things that we value in our society right now, how so much of it is superficial and meaningless. So I wrote a show that exposes some internal truths about people, showing what a few of us are thinking on the inside while our outsides are saying something else. There’s also a dick joke.

You're the playwright and director; are you also in these shows?
CJ: Good God, no. People would run screaming from the theatre if I tried acting.

What got you into theater?
CJ: I’ve always loved theatre from the perspective of the audience member, but I didn’t begin writing plays until a few years ago when I was in the Edward Albee Playwriting Workshop at the University of Houston. Since then, I’ve written a number of one-acts, some of which have been performed in festivals around the country. Also I’m always hot, and theatres are dark and cold, so it balances me out.

What playwrights do you admire?
CJ: I’m flaky. I usually love whomever I’m reading at the moment. Right now, it’s Caryl Churchill, Martin McDonagh, C. Denby Swanson. I read a lot of short fiction, and George Saunders is my current favorite.

How did your experience at University of Houston's renowned creative writing department translate to theater?
CJ: Going through the creative writing program at UH taught me how to just throw my work out there, whether it was “finished” or not, and see what kind of reaction it would get. A lot of writers hold on to their work until they’re on the umpteenth draft, and I think I would be like that too except I’m a procrastinator (almost to the point of it being a disease). I had to get over holding on to things if I wanted to graduate. Now I’m cool with writing a first draft, grabbing it off the printer and immediately giving it to someone to read. I wrote fiction while in the creative writing program, so the theatre training I received was actually through the theatre department at UH, years after I graduated. I hope that the university is planning a cross-pollination of those two programs because I would love to see a playwriting component in the creative writing department.

Besides your own company, who do you think (people, theaters, companies, actors, directors, set/lighting, et al) is doing interesting work? In Houston and elsewhere?
CJ: It will come as no shock to you that Houston isn’t exactly theatre central. There aren’t a lot of places for the newbie playwright or director to cut his/her teeth. So we have to create our own theatre companies - I created Six Of One Productions - and scrape together enough money to put on a show. I was lucky with In a Jar…at the Smithsonian in that Houston Arts Alliance gave me a grant for the production through their Individual Artist Grant program. But there’s only so much grant money to go around, so most individual artists and small companies are paying for everything out of their own pockets, which is a dicey proposition.

Nova Arts is doing some interesting work, and I’m sure the resurrected pseudo-IBP (Catastrophic Theatre) will be great, but we need a more populated theatre community in order to build the kind of environment that will create a great theatre scene in Houston. We have to have affordable theatre spaces for artists to rent. We need to have a sufficient number of opportunities that generate enough work so that talented writers, designers, directors and actors stay in Houston (or move here) rather than bolting for either coast. I completely believe that there is an untapped theatre audience in our city – we just need to get them in the door, get them excited about the art form. As important as it is to revisit the classics of the past and the recent hits on Broadway, which a couple of theatres in Houston do extremely well, it is also important to incubate new work for the stage. It’s exciting to sit in a theatre and watch the first production of a brand new piece. You, the audience member, feel invested in it. Maybe because a play is only half-finished when the writing part of the process is complete. A play is theoretical, existing only on paper, until it’s performed in front of an audience.

What will you be working on in 2008?
CJ: As soon as In a Jar… has closed, I’ll immediately begin working on two new pieces. Both are commissioned works, which means I can’t talk about them yet. But please check out www.cryjack.com for updates in the near future.