The Obie-winning Ice Factory festival presents seven new works from June 28 to August 12 at the New Ohio Theatre. We spoke with Nina Segal about her play Danger Signals.
Tell us about your play!
Danger Signals is a collaboration with Built for Collapse. It's a piece about the brain and the arctic and pioneerism and instability and the ways that history can be constructed and reconstructed. It's also about monkeys and humans and what it means to define 'acceptable' behaviour.
What have been the most exciting things about seeing your show come together?
Built for Collapse are a multidisciplinary company, so it's been really exciting to work closely with a choreographer and a composer as part of the process. To come into the room and see your text re-interpreted through another medium - as a piece of music or as a section of dance - feels like a strange kind of magic.
Who are your favorite playwrights, past and present?
Tim Crouch and Tim Etchells.
What famous (or not so famous) line do you wish you’d written?
'Okay, so here is the rushing of the river:
the rushing of the river.'
- The Ridiculous Darkness, Wolfram Lotz
What would you change about the current state of theater?
More diversity - of voices and of form. More risk - from artists, by theatres and for audiences. And please stop charging more than $25 for a ticket.
How important is it to you that your work relate to our current political/social climate?
I believe that all work is political. To try to make apolitical work (which I don't) would be a statement in itself. But more now than ever, I don't know why anyone would try to make work that doesn't engage with the world as it is. The outlook is stark, right now - and I think the job of the artist is to engage with that, rather than attempt to distract from it.
