Episode 21: Bash Halow writes plays

NOTE: Hey. I’ve been gone a while. I’ve got two podcast interviews lined up from before. Now they’re gonna come out. This one, now. Another one, soon. Then … I don’t have any more interviews lined up yet. I’m a firm believer that everyone has something important or fun or relatable to say about something. Who’s next? Also, there’s a grind as Bash’s phone call fell out, but I think the gist of it carries through. 

“The only thing I know … is how to fail at writing plays,” jokes (not jokes) Bash Halow off the bat. 

Bash is a speaker and an article writer and a practice management consultant for veterinary practices and a former veterinary technician and a former veterinary practice manager. And I bet, although I didn’t get into it, a lot of other stuff. 

He promised me a couple years ago that if he got actors to read a play of his, he’d invite me to NYC. So right after getting laid off, I headed off to the Big Apple days after my layoff. NYC was neat. My best friend showed me around town (we mocked many things). And Bash’s play, read by actors and actresses he knew, was really marvelous: surreal, emotional, strange, funny, old-fashioned, modern. It kind of was all the things. 

Best of all, no matter how smart it got, it always fixated on heart and emotion. Kinda like every time I’ve ever seen Bash teach or work on something.  

So that’s how we wind up here, with Bash, talking plays. They are a way for Bash to bring the ideas and thoughts floating around his head out into the light, in engagement with other artists and audiences. 

“I can’t be the only one who thinks like this!” he says as his inner voice. “Let’s try one more time!” 

But to just explain it you, well, “that just lets all the air out of it,” Bash says. Better to leave the Easter eggs and the hints and the clues and leave you to think it over yourself. 

Find out how 8th-grade English teacher Ms. Knox pushed Bash into stream-of-consciousness journaling (“like unlocking Pandora’s box,” he says), how Michael Cunningham (The Hours) manages his writing process and why he thinks his latest play has truly said what he wanted to say in writing. 

My favorite thought? “If you’re writing something and it feels great, it’s probably great,” he says. Don’t hand other people your bulls***. You know when it’s good. 

 

WANT TO KNOW MORE? 

> Remember Matthew Shepard? His tragic murder inspired was a major impetus behind Bash’s latest play. 

> Bash has a couple of one-act plays for sale. I adore them. They’re heavy on the surreal and just my cup of tea. His latest I saw in NYC is more than a few steps beyond these, so beg him for a copy. Maybe he’ll share. 

> Our intrepid interviewee name-drops a Jeremy Irons performance in a play where a playwright talks about a cricket-bat approach to writing. It’s The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard. Check out a little of the dialogue and thoughts from a blogger here. 

> Heard of Tereze Gluck, sister of a Noble Prize winner? I had not. She wrote a story Bash loves, “The Coast of Massachusetts.” (Read free here with a JSTOR registration.) “She was such an original thinker,” Bash laughs. When Bash asked her once if she missed writing later in life, she told him, with wry humor, "No, no, no, it’s easier to take Prozac.” Here is a collection of short stories you can also read free.