The Pipeline premier reading of Jen Browne’s Hags Mopes and the End of All Existence is coming to our Bonfire Series this coming July 21 at 7:30PM. Check out our interview below to learn more about Jen and her very strange play about the sustainability of love and the end of the world.
And don’t forget to reserve your seat for Hags, Mopes, and the End of All Existence, July 21, 7:30PM, South Oxford Space.
Pipeline Theatre Company: What do you want us to know about your play?
Jen Browne: A lot will happen in a fairly short amount of time, just ride the current, don’t panic, and you’ll be fine.
PTC: When and where did you decide to start writing this play? Why?
JB: Hags and Mopes were birthed out of a writing session with playwright collective Lather Rinse Repeat. LRR hosts bi-annual retreats focused on generating the next big idea and out came Hags and Mopes. Many members of LRR claim partial ownership for the play as some of their prompts played a key role in the play’s existence. At the time I was also thinking a lot about my grandparents and love and the sustainability of relationships, so that coupled with the insane suggestions I was pulling out of a hat is why this play exists.
PTC: What excites you most about this project?
JB: Hags and Mopes is particularly exciting because it represents a moment in time where I decided not to avoid writing something just because it was impossible. This play has many impossible moments and that is what excites me about theatre in general seeing the impossible played out beautifully.
PTC: In one sentence, tell us something strange that happens in your play.
JB: Literally everything that happens in this play is strange, it’s hard to pick just one….also I don’t want to ruin the fun, so it’s a surprise.
PTC: Are you working on anything else? What?
JB: The Diabolical Starfish, a solo show for person and puppet I wrote for the amazing Stacey Raymond is ready for some on your feet exploratory work. I’m in pre-production for a seven part series I co-wrote and am co-producing called 18 Grand, we should go into production in September (fingers crossed). Preparing for a first workshop production in 2017 of a multi-media dance theatre piece titled Call Me She with Purple Threads Ensemble and Damaged Dance. Fellow PlayLab classmate Gina Femia and I are kicking off a new Brooklyn writers group called Coffee Klatsch, it’ll be just like when our moms went to coffee klatsches only we’ll be writing new plays.
PTC: Two truths and a lie, go:
JB: 1) I’m engaged in a long term battle with squirrels. They are an ever disturbing foe.
2) Road tripping to California was one of the longest car rides of my life.
3) Once I stole a lipstick from a small store, I then had a nightmare about the shop owner chasing me. I never stole again.
PTC: What’s next for you?
JB: Almost immediately after the Bonfire Series I will be traveling to Nova Scotia. Eastern Canada is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I will sleep in, write, maybe paddle around a lake, and attend a busking festival in Halifax. Then I will return to Brooklyn and write more plays, submit those plays and/or push them on anybody that might be interested in developing/producing them for me.
About Hags, Mopes, and the End of All Existence
by Jen Browne | directed by Tasha Gordon-Solmon
Thursday, July 21, 7:30PM
Reserve Your Seat
Hags and Mopes are the oldest couple in the world and they’ve had enough, so maybe it’s not so bad the snow keeps coming, the cow and the goat have retired, and a comet is heading straight for them. What else can go wrong before death comes a barkin’?
