A Conversation with Jordan Ramirez Puckett
Jordan is a Chicanx writer from the Bay Area, currently living in New York City. Their plays include Untitled Dad Play, Transitional Love Stories, Huelga, En Las Sombras, To Saints and Stars, A Driving Beat, Las Pajaritas, Restore, and Inevitable. These works have been produced and/or developed by Abingdon Theatre Company, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Goodman Theatre, Harold Clurman Laboratory Theatre Company, Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, Playwrights Realm, San Diego Repertory Theatre, San Francisco Playhouse, among others. A Driving Beat was short-listed for the prestigious 2022 Yale Drama Series Prize. Jordan recently graduated from the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at Juilliard.
What was your experience like at the 2024 NHP writer’s conference in New Harmony, Indiana?
Being at New Harmony was such an extraordinary experience. I’m still having trouble articulating exactly what it meant to me. Firstly, I don’t know if I’ve ever been in a space with so many trans artists before. I don’t think before going to this conference I had ever called myself a trans artist, so it felt very meaningful on a personal level. On a professional level, I was able to get dramaturgical feedback from the incomparable Amrita Ramanan. We had never met before, but from our first conversation, I felt an instant connection with her. The notes she gave me on my play were so incisive, that I’m sure that she saved me hours of writing in circles to find the story that I’m trying to tell.
Who are your favorite playwrights and authors?
In no particular order: Paula Vogel, Suzan-Lori Parks, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Lauren Yee, Dipika Guha, Tanya Barfield, David Lindsay-Abaire. It’s hard to say exactly why these playwrights are my favorite, but they all have a very distinctive voice. I feel like if I heard a line of dialogue from one of these writers that I had never heard before, I could tell you which one of them had written it because they all are such unique and gifted craftspeople.
Do you have a daily writing ritual or any specific writing process?
I often find the blank page really daunting, so it helps if I can trick myself into writing. This means that I end up doing a lot of word crawls, which are basically games that break up writing into mini-tasks. So, for example, it might say to roll a six-sided die and write for that many minutes or roll five twenty-sided die and write that many words. And I find that by doing that over and over and over again, eventually, I’ve written a play.
Can you share a pivotal moment or interaction that profoundly influenced your approach to storytelling and playwriting?
I remember distinctly being an undergrad in college and reading Baltimore Waltz by Paula Vogel for the first time. I was sitting in the student center overlooking an icy Lake Michigan and I started sobbing. I had no idea that theatre could do that before, that it could tell a fantastical story grounded in reality, that it could draw you in with humor before delivering an emotional gut punch. It’s been almost 20 years since I first read this play and it’s still influencing my writing to this day.
How do you like to spend your Saturday mornings?
I love all forms of rock climbing but I don’t like to do it when a lot of other people are watching. I’ve discovered that Saturday mornings are the best time of the week to go to my local bouldering gym in Harlem, so that’s usually where you can find me.
Do you have a dream project for the future?
I’ve written the first draft of an immersive play called Transitional Love Stories. The script weaves together six separate stories, and other than the first, middle, and penultimate scenes, audience members have to decide which storylines and characters they most want to follow. Because it requires thirteen actors and you can’t just do a reading of the script in the traditional sense, the play has been sitting in my drawer for about a year. I’d really love for someone to take a chance and develop that script for production.