Itamar Moses

uh it's a good question i was interested in writing uh more generally from a pretty young age i mean i was a big reader uh which a lot of people who end up writers are i think as a kid and i read a lot of you know fantasy and science fiction and that type of stuff so i thought i think my first ambition when i was 10 or 11 was to become i thought i was going to write epic fantasy series and then theater came a little later i mean my parents were both into theater and opera.

And, you know, I grew up in the Bay area where there's a lot, you know, there's sort of a cool art scene and they sort of liked going to that stuff.

So it was sort of around as a art form I was aware of.

And I liked being in school plays and stuff.

Like I thought plays were fun, but it wasn't really until high school that I um that i started thinking maybe they it was something i actually wanted to do a few things happened one was that angels in america was sort of a big deal at the time i was in high school in the early 90s so i remember hearing about that play and reading it and then seeing it i think in like 94 95 when i was a senior in high school and it sort of came back to the bay area in a big regional production at act so i saw that and i found that really inspiring and I'd already been thinking about writing a play because there were these guys at my high school a few years older than me who sort of had this weird theater company that they'd started on their own and did like these crazy like rock musicals in the basement of a pizza place in Berkeley.

And so I'd sort of been seeing their stuff and thinking that was really like... funny and smart and cool, the stuff they were doing.

Then I saw Angels in America, and...

Yeah, and I was like, oh, maybe I should try to write a play.

And, you know, that...

So it was towards the second half of high school that I got into that and started seeing everything at Berkeley Rep and ACT and the theaters in the area.

And then...

In college, I went to Yale, not to the drama school, but undergrad.

But there's a really thriving undergrad theater scene at Yale, like just tons of plays happening all the time.

I assume it's still true.

This was true in the late 90s when I was there.

So it became like my main extracurricular activity, like being in plays and putting on my own plays.

And that was like my social scene as well as my... you know, the main thing I was doing outside of class.

And so by the end of college, it had sort of solidified.

It was like, oh, I'm going to move to New York and try to write plays.

So that was how I ended up on that path.

And then I just sort of kept walking through the doors that opened.

Yeah, absolutely.

And were there specific playwrights who inspired you at that time?

Well, obviously Tony Kushner, because of sort of how large Angels loomed.

And it's funny, there's a story I love about about years later I was on like a panel of playwrights at NYU, I think, talking to undergrad or grad, I forget if it was like BFA or MFA playwrights at NYU.

uh it's a good question i was interested in writing uh more generally from a pretty young age i mean i was a big reader uh which a lot of people who end up writers are i think as a kid and i read a lot of you know fantasy and science fiction and that type of stuff so i thought i think my first ambition when i was 10 or 11 was to become i thought i was going to write epic fantasy series and then theater came a little later i mean my parents were both into theater and opera.

And, you know, I grew up in the Bay area where there's a lot, you know, there's sort of a cool art scene and they sort of liked going to that stuff.

So it was sort of around as a art form I was aware of.

And I liked being in school plays and stuff.

Like I thought plays were fun, but it wasn't really until high school that I um that i started thinking maybe they it was something i actually wanted to do a few things happened one was that angels in america was sort of a big deal at the time i was in high school in the early 90s so i remember hearing about that play and reading it and then seeing it i think in like 94 95 when i was a senior in high school and it sort of came back to the bay area in a big regional production at act so i saw that and i found that really inspiring and I'd already been thinking about writing a play because there were these guys at my high school a few years older than me who sort of had this weird theater company that they'd started on their own and did like these crazy like rock musicals in the basement of a pizza place in Berkeley.

And so I'd sort of been seeing their stuff and thinking that was really like... funny and smart and cool, the stuff they were doing.

Then I saw Angels in America, and...

Yeah, and I was like, oh, maybe I should try to write a play.

And, you know, that...

So it was towards the second half of high school that I got into that and started seeing everything at Berkeley Rep and ACT and the theaters in the area.

And then...

In college, I went to Yale, not to the drama school, but undergrad.

But there's a really thriving undergrad theater scene at Yale, like just tons of plays happening all the time.

I assume it's still true.

This was true in the late 90s when I was there.

So it became like my main extracurricular activity, like being in plays and putting on my own plays.

And that was like my social scene as well as my... you know, the main thing I was doing outside of class.

And so by the end of college, it had sort of solidified.

It was like, oh, I'm going to move to New York and try to write plays.

So that was how I ended up on that path.

And then I just sort of kept walking through the doors that opened.

Yeah, absolutely.

And were there specific playwrights who inspired you at that time?

Well, obviously Tony Kushner, because of sort of how large Angels loomed.

And it's funny, there's a story I love about about years later I was on like a panel of playwrights at NYU, I think, talking to undergrad or grad, I forget if it was like BFA or MFA playwrights at NYU.