Exclusive Theater Review: MAB.
Playwrite/Director: Hayley Spivey
Stage Manager: Rachel Oshrin
Actors: Hayley Spivey, Siobhan Carroll, Alex Casillas, Oreine Robinson
By Taylor Hunsberger
The site-specific Eugene O’Neill finalist play MAB. by Hayley Spivey will run again this weekend inside Hayley’s actual Brooklyn apartment. The show which was created, designed, and stage managed by a team of all women artists follows a group of roommates who have a chance encounter with someone who may or may not be invading their space. I got to chat with some of the team including Hayley Spivey (playwright, director, producer, performer), Siobhan Carroll (producer, devisor, performer), and Rachel Oshrin (stage manager) all about their process! The team also includes Alex Casillas and Oreine Robinson. Make sure to bookmark MAB. to follow whose apartment the show decides to haunt next!
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
ITOL: What inspired MAB. and what was the writing process like for you Hayley?
Hayley Spivey: I took a screenwriting class in horror and the instructor told us that you should write what you fear. I am petrified of ghosts and have been since childhood so I really wanted to write a ghost story. I also had just gone through college which included a lot of experiences that fall under the #MeToo category. I felt very motivated to write a play about what I feared the most hidden within a ghost narrative. We entered the rehearsal process with zero pages. We would share stories about our own experiences and then I’d write pages the next day. We’d put them up and then continue on scene by scene. I took the lead on directing, but it was a devised, collaborative effort.
Siobhan Carroll: Hayley started talking about MAB. the year after we graduated college when we were roommates for real. We lived with our friend Bev and Hayley thought the idea of us doing an apartment play would be cool. That year Alex (another performer in the show) had to couch surf with us, so that meant that it was the four of us hearing Hayley start to come up with this spooky as hell idea and some of the intricacies of the plot. She told me a ghost story so scary during one of those nights that I was like, “please never, ever say that to me again.” Sadly it’s in the play so I hear it quite frequently.
ITOL: For readers who have not seen the show yet, could you give a quick summary of the show?
Hayley Spivey: Three roommates struggle to get along with their creepy new subletter who only leaves her room late at night and enters their rooms while they’re sleeping. Once they realize this roommate wields a mysterious, dark power, they’re forced to evict. However, getting this roommate out of their rent stabilized apartment may be harder than they expect…
ITOL: How has the piece grown and changed over time?
Hayley Spivey: It started with a draft in 2017 that contains the same exact story, but written in a different way. It’s really incredible how radically different the script is while still telling the same story with the same characters and tone.
ITOL: How did you come to the decision of the site-specific nature of MAB.? How did you go about finding a space and then tailoring it to the project?
Hayley Spivey: The play was always meant to be performed in an apartment. No one can afford theater spaces right out of college, so you use what you have. That said we actually followed through with putting it up once I moved into my current apartment. It’s just a unique, beautiful space with tons of doors and site lines. I had actually forgotten about this play, so Siobhán was the one who noticed how perfect it would fit the play. I was shocked she remembered it!
Siobhan Carroll: There are a lot of secrets we know about the space that we don’t want to give away. We kind of had to teach ourselves how to do some magic to make this show. We figured those things out by spending a ton of time in the space, having one person be the eyes, and the rest of us playing around until we found the most powerful images. We also do a lot of tricks with lights (thanks Rosh)!
ITOL: How has the reception been to MAB. from audiences? Has it been different throughout the various showings?
Hayley Spivey: People go crazy for it. I think its site specific nature is really refreshing. I’ve been told multiple times that people have gone on to create projects that were inspired by our DIY structure. I think it really reminded people how much we’re capable of making with very little. It’s wildly meaningful any time someone tells me that. Some shows are more vocal than others, but people are always gripped!
Siobhan Carroll: The reception of MAB. has been overwhelming! From the first show, we could not believe how our friends responded to the invite and turned up to support us. During the first run, we grabbed audience members after each show and asked them what they thought, and thanks to that we have a fantastic audience reaction video. My favorite audiences are the ones that actually scream at some of our jump scares.
ITOL: Hayley, can you discuss the process of applying to the O’Neill Award? How does it feel to have gotten so far in the process?
Hayley Spivey: O’Neill was wild because I had to really create a firmer script. There are some scenes that we acted out without ever having a real script–movement pieces that had story elements woven in. Those moments are extremely difficult to capture with words. It’s an insane honor to be recognized as a finalist by the NPC. I was very afraid that one of the main appeals of the show was that it was an apartment play, so having people read the play without seeing it and still feel connected to it really sealed the deal for me.
ITOL: What do you hope audiences get out of MAB.?
Hayley Spivey: I hope audiences can chew on some difficult subject material in a really safe, fun way. I wanted audience members to walk away feeling loved and seen rather than triggered and upset. I think all the magic in the play helps us push the harder topics while keeping the energy in the room positive and warm.
Siobhan Carroll: For me, at its core, the play is about what it means to take care of each other. The characters, especially Tally–the one I play–do not know how to take care of their friends at the top of this play. And hopefully by the end of it that has changed or started to change.Hayley also always says this thing about the haunting effects of trauma, which again for me, she’s really captured through her metaphor or allegory here in this work. For me, the theatre is always most effective when it’s entertaining. So basically I hope this experience is a total romp that makes it effortless to think about these larger issues and perhaps feel seen if you identify with any of the characters’ experiences.
ITOL: Rachel, can you talk about your process as a stage manager?
Rachel Oshrin: Because no two plays are alike, my process as a stage manager always involves a fair amount of adaptation and flexibility. For most plays, that means learning how a director likes to run a rehearsal room, or how a designer prefers to communicate light cues, or how to best preset the space each night. When it comes to MAB., that means transforming an apartment kitchen into a fully-functioning tech booth, syncing countless devices across a nontraditional space, and calling cues to be carried out on a stage that I cannot see.
ITOL: What’s it like working on a show when you cannot physically see the space?
Siobhan Carroll: Wow, cannot wait for Rosh (editor’s note: this nickname is short for Rachel Oshrin) to answer you! My favorite way she says it is, “I call the show based mainly on vibes.” And boy, does she! I literally don’t know how she does what she does back there. And it’s always fun to visit her in the kitchen in the scenes where the play takes me back there as Tally.
Rachel Oshrin: I often joke that I call MAB. purely based on vibes, and while that isn’t entirely untrue, there’s more to it than that. The genius of Hayley’s script is that it’s both precise and expansive – the core moments are so specific and consistent, but there’s also so much room for the cast to collaborate and devise. Because of this, the play sometimes feels like a living thing– growing and changing throughout the rehearsal process of each run. The challenge (and the fun!) of stage managing MAB. is making space for an ever-evolving project to continue to develop, while still making sure that certain necessary benchmarks are hit in every iteration of the piece. We’ve been very intentional in building in specific moments to ensure that I’m always able to track what’s going on onstage. Calling the show blind can be a challenge – after all, if someone is out of their light, I can’t see them and adjust it in the moment, and if I don’t hear a door slam onstage when it usually does, I don’t know when to start counting down to the next sound cue – but as we approach our fourth run, the rhythm of the show is so ingrained in all of us that it’s practically second nature. So all that to say…I call MAB. purely based on vibes.
ITOL: Tell me all about having such elaborate tech in an apartment space! How do you manage it?
Rachel Oshrin: When you first enter the space, MAB. seems as low-tech as you’d expect any small apartment play to be. Even once the audience realizes that we might have a few bluetooth speakers and lights supplementing the onstage practicals, they think that that’s it. It’s deceivingly simple…until it isn’t. As the story progresses, and the world of the play diverges further and further from the realism of what might reasonably happen in an apartment, the tech follows suit, transforming the space into something else entirely. I’m always so delighted when audience members come up to me after the show and ask how all of the tech is possible in the space, or tell me that they want to come back to shadow me and see everything that I’m doing backstage (full disclosure: I’m mostly dancing while manually operating strobe lights). Figuring out the technical elements needed to create the world of MAB. has been a true collaboration for the entire team, and making it all happen each night is such a joy.
ITOL: What do you hope is next for the project?
Hayley Spivey: We want to go to the Edinburgh festival. That’s the immediate goal. We also want to find a real venue. It’s been invite only so far because of the type of venue, so we want a space where we can invite all the strangers of the world to come join us.
Siobhan Carroll: I want us to move to other apartments! I aspire for MAB. to move to other super cool apartments in NYC. So if anyone feels like they have a super creepy apartment and would be down to let a bunch of actors transform it for about two weeks, I want to talk to you. As you acknowledged in your questions we really tailored this production around this space, so we’d love to adapt the play, especially its staging and visual imagery, around each space in a super specific way. Who knows what other spooky moments totally different architecture would offer us?
ITOL: Is there anything else you would like readers to know?
Hayley Spivey: I want readers to know that the DIY scene is very alive. In this age of AI, live events are more exciting than ever. A computer could never do what we do!
#AlexCasillas #Brooklyn #FemaleCharacters #FemaleDirectors #HayleySpivey #Horror #Interactive #livePerformance #MAB #Movies #OreineRobinson #RachelOshrin #Reviews #SiobhanCarroll #Theater #womenPlaywright #Writing
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