Director and playwright Morgan Gould is no stranger to the finer points of pop culture. TV is her procrastination technique. I Wanna Fucking Tear You Apart is full of references and allusions to a broad array of television programs. Assistant director Laura Scialdone took a moment to ask Morgan about the intentions behind these choices.
Why did you choose Top Chef as one of your first pop culture references in the show?
It's funny, because for many of my drafts they were watching Grey's Anatomy, but when you're writing a play and it's based in the present and you have a reference, it has to actually be what is airing at this moment; otherwise, weirdly the play is dated, even if it's only a few months off. When I was first writing this, it was in November 2015 and they watched the episode where Derek Shepard died on Grey’s. But now that actually makes the show seem like it's old.
Also, because this is the first big pop culture reference in the show, I didn't want it to be something that people who don't watch a lot of TV wouldn't get. Even if you don't watch Top Chef, it's pretty clear with the opening beats what is happening on the show, whereas Grey's Anatomy has a lot more backstory.
I love TV. I love watching television with my best friends, and I wanted to let the audience in to the relatable point of sharing a show with someone; so whether or not you actually watch Top Chef, you know that they are cooking, and someone lost, and what it’s like to be upset about the outcome of reality TV with someone else.
Also, when I am making a reference I not only want it to land with the audience, but I want to love it too; I'm watching Top Chef right now, and these are things that I genuinely think are funny and am interested in.
Sex and the City surfaces a handful of times in the show. Why do you think it’s so resonant with you?
I like to think it’s a little like Hogwarts and which “house” you’d be in. It’s fun identity politics. People my age, particularly women and gay men, growing up during high school and college we watched Sex and The City, and it became a thing: “How do you identify yourself—are you a Miranda, or are you a Sam?” And again, people who may not watch the show have a sense of the broad idea of identifying with a character.
American Horror Story: Hotel was an influence as well, particularly for the opening of the show. How did that spring up for you?
I love Ryan Murphy, and I feel like the way that he taps into gay tropes and queerness is so bloody fantastic, literally and figuratively. I remember seeing that scene of Lady Gaga and Matt Bomer in Hotel with “Tear You Apart” the day that I started writing the show, and I remember thinking “That is gay fantasy; walking down the hallway with Lady Gaga.” So in thinking about that fantasy, I was using that image while creating the relationships, and I thought it would be fun to start off the play with a sequence of “us living our best gay/fat lives.” Also, as the creator of the production, I am also a party host, and I wanted to kick off the evening with something fabulous and fun.
The play opens with a series of projections, naming the cast and crew—why are there “opening credits” at the top of the show?
That was one of my earliest images. Some of my favorite movies were made it in the late ’90's/ early 2000's, and all of the credits were at the beginning; it’s fun because I feel like it teaches you how to watch the movie from the beginning. You get a sense of the tone right away.
Sam and Leo’s love for television is a motif in the play, which made me wonder what their credits for their TV show would look like. They would look like American Horror Story and a ’90's movie. Clearly.
High drag makes an appearance in the production; aside from the gay culture that it is related to, what was your intention?
It goes along with why I like television so much—it’s about perfection and fantasy, “the perfect romantic story / the most amazing / the most attractive / the most fulfilling of my desires” in a simplistic way. A lot of it is a trope, and I think that it shows us what we really want to see or hear, it shows us our desires.
So I start with that drag moment to start off the show as the perfect fantasy. Then as we watch the show, we see the slow breakdown of that fantasy—the style of the play becomes more and more real rather than presentational, which mimics Sam and Leo's relationship. They try to hold up this front and not let things fall apart, but eventually that codependency leaks through and creates a mess.
—Laura Scialdone