The (Curious) Mind Of Playwright Madeleine George
metroweekly.comThe (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2014, is on one of many rolls during our conversation about her craft, her queerness, and her breathtaking and powerful climate change comedy Hurricane Diane, currently getting a divine production at the Avant Bard Theatre in Arlington, Va.“Maybe I’m a little bit more mainstream in this way,” she continues. “But what I really want is for people of any gender and sexual identity to be able to identify with a protagonist who is a nonbinary person — or let’s say a trans-masculine butch person or somebody who has for decades and centuries been seen as niche or weird or different.
I want that person to be eligible to be the universal human. And in order for that to happen, people from lots of different groups need to be able to identify with that person.“And this is about systemic exclusion.
We always have been asked to identify with straight white men. Always. They’ve been at the center. And if we want to look at TV, movies, or plays, we’ve been asked to identify with that person’s trajectory.
I want little boys to be able to see themselves in female protagonists in stories, and for white people to feel like people of color are universal in the way that we are all each individually the universal human.“I don’t want the protagonist role to be an exclusive place.”George quickly adds that she’s “not trying to say, ‘Oh, we should dissolve identity categories.’ I’m not saying that at all.
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