Hi everyone! Welcome to our interview series with the current rockin MFA playwrights, leading up to Seabury Quinn! Cristina Luzarraga is a 1st year MFA playwright and the writer of “The Critical Distance of a Nose” which kicks off the reading series on the 21st. She is known in the Playwriting program for her dark dark sense of humor, her insane intellect and her devilish vibe! Check out the interview below and then see her reading this very month!! Also watch out for all 7 of the other interviews with our other writers
1.In your play “Critical Distance of the Nose” you explore ideas of outsider art and art criticism. Have you always been a big art person?
I’ve always been a big wannabe art person–does that count? Those who can’t make art, write plays about art.
2.Some people have called your work pretty dark since in madness you’ve covered such topics as faking pregnancies, virgin sacrifice and Adam and Eve and a rando dude hooking up. What draws you to darker material? Why not just write plays about bunnies flying and sunshine?
See, I thought those Madness pieces were funny, particularly the Adam and Eve one. I think I’m drawn more towards humor than darkness. It just so happens that my sense of humor is pretty dark and twisted. I’d write about flying bunnies and sunshine if said bunnies were to fly too close to the sun à la Icarus and meet some horrible flying-bunny-demise.
3.If your play took me to an art museum as a date ;), what would the date be like and why?
The date would entail a lot of standing around and trying to seem smart. And then finally, we’d be like: hey, let’s cut the crap and go to the museum café because I want an overpriced scone and Diet Coke.
- what’s a fun fact about you?
I’m a quadruplet. (Please don’t fact check that.)
Now that you are obsessed with Cristina, come see her reading in the Seabury Quinn Fest!
Details:
CRITICAL DISTANCE OF A NOSE
Written by Cristina Luzarraga
1:00 pm, Thursday April 21st, Elizabeth Baker Theater, Kantner Hall
Inez is an art history graduate student at Columbia attempting to navigate the highfalutin waters of academia and write her dissertation on outsider art. But her scholarship is turned on its head when she encounters Felicia, a security guard at the Guggenheim who calls it like she sees it.
More about Cristina
Cristina Luzarraga was born and raised in Short Hills, New Jersey, save for a few teenage years spent in London, England. She graduated in 2011 from Princeton University with B.A. in Comparative Literature. Subsequently, she moved to Chicago where she studied sketch writing and improvisation at iO Theatre and The Second City Conservatory and performed stand-up comedy at Zanies and elsewhere. Her full-length play Due Unto Others was produced by Princeton’s Lewis Center for the Arts. Her short plays Hippo Woman and Baker’s Three were produced at Greenhouse Theater in Chicago.
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