Noah Haidle is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter whose works have been performed on Broadway, across the United States and around the world. With Spirit And The Dust, he has written a major play about life. In it, he explores true friendship, late love and deep pain. Dramaturg Daniel Richter spoke with him.

You once compared your theatre to a “secular church service”. Was theology too dark for you after all? Or why do you write for the theatre?

Noah Haidle Oh, geez, did I really write that theater is like a secular church service? That sounds awfully pretentious. Theater, unlike film and television, is an active art form. You don't sit back and relax; as an audience member you create the story inside your own imagination.

As our ability to imagine atrophies (AI technologies claim to amplify our abilities, but in my experience they atrophy cognitive functions) theater will become a place where humans must once again activate their imaginations. And as our individual realities become so distorted that there can be no consensus on what is true, theater will become that rare place where every person undeniably experiences the same exact thing. Kind of a like a secular church service.

Fuck. Maybe that comparison wasn't so bad after all, however pretentious it may be.

Your plays have been performed internationally for many years. You recently saw the premiere of your play Human Repertoire at the Theater Oberhausen. Can you describe what you see as the main differences between American and German theater traditions? (From an author's perspective?)

Noah Haidle It's a simple distinction: American theater is a playwright's medium, while German theater belongs to the director. In America, no one can change a single word of a script without the playwright's consent (and I mean that legally, it's in every contract). In Germany, you can do whatever the fuck you want. The script for you is a jumping off point towards imaginative expression, while here a production is generally an execution of the playwright's vision. 

I enjoy and am cognizant of my very different roles in both. When I see a production of a play of mine in the U.S. I can expect a faithful interpretation of a fragment of my mind: in in Germany I often show up and am like, 'what the fuck is going on?' 

The other key difference is support. Financially and culturally, theater in Germany is seen as an integral function of healthy society. In America, not so much. When I met my wife and told her I wrote plays she asked, 'people still do that?'

Your plays The Homemaker, Birthday Candles and Spirit And The Dust are all set in fitted kitchens, which is surely no coincidence. Where does your penchant for kitchens come from? (‘Kitchen-sink naturalism’?)

Noah Haidle ‘Kitchen-sink naturalism’, for those unfamiliar with the term, describes the attempt to dramatize real life on stage (the lights work, the kitchen works, those are real humans living real lives, etcetera). While naturalism feels appropriate for television and film, in the theater I think it's bonkers. 

The three plays you mentioned all have the same unit cast, three women, three men, are all set in a kitchen, obviously, and all use different theatrical techniques to raise my middle finger to the outdated and absurd attempt to still use theater to engage with naturalism. 

The three plays (and maybe a few more, also in kitchens with the same cast) will hopefully be performed in repertory. By the way, what is the Deutsches Theater doing next season?

Your plays mostly depict broken worlds. They tell of the chaos that is life. People seek guidance in coping with life crises. Despite all the dystopian premonitions, your characters are drawn with great affection and your texts radiate a great deal of warmth. How much hope is there in your texts?

Noah Haidle To quote one of my all time favorite human beings, Sylvester Stallone, who said in his aptly titled biopic Sly: 'Im not in the storytelling business, I'm in the hope business.' Although our businesses different in almost all other ways, the art Sly and I seek to make offers a small antidote to the relentless chaos of our world. 

”You can only grasp the essence of a person in its entirety when their life has ended. Then you see the pattern,“ says Hope Foster, the central character in Spirit And The Dust – played by Corinna Harfouch. Do you write from the moment of death? In other words, from the end? From the moment when everything is set in stone for the first time and you can recognize the pattern of your own life?

Noah Haidle Writing from the moment of their death? I've never done it but it's a fascinating idea, maybe I'll try it next time. Less excitingly, I just write line by line, without a whole lot of idea of what's going to happen next.  My theory is that if I'm surprised by what's going to happen, the audience will be similarly surprised.  Like Hope, I can myself only see the pattern inside a play once it's finished. 

Director Anna Bergmann is already staging your third play. What defines your connection? What do you appreciate about her?

Noah Haidle Anna's imagination and mine fit together. Which is a unique connection not based in interpersonal relationship. For some delightfully mysterious reason, my plays allow her to unleash the dragon that lives inside her mind. She's directed all three of the kitchen sink plays and who knows how many plays we'll get to do by the time it's all done (at the moment I get to look back to recognize the pattern of my life (ie, death). I'll see the place this interview held in my life, fully understand the role of family structures in my work, and I expect to look back and find that Anna remained a constant signal in the pattern of my imaginative life.