A Q&A with Playwright Audrey Cefaly

Get to know the playwright of Maytag Virgin, Audrey Cefaly!

Q: What inspired you to write Maytag Virgin?

I was given a prompt for an opportunity at Atlas in DC for their annual “Intersections” festival. The idea was to mash up different viewpoints or ideas into a monologue or a duet. So, I thought about how I might approach it and still keep it “on brand” for me, which involves deep character work and ideally something southern. Somehow, the idea of a Protestant woman and her Catholic neighbor came into view, and I wrote the monologue as a 10-minute solo piece (from the perspective of protagonist Lizzy Nash), and I still make that original piece available free of charge for anyone looking to perform it.

Q: What is it like to see your work come to life? What are you most proud of with this script in particular?

Maytag Virgin hits hard for me on so many levels. I would not know until years after the world premiere just how autobiographical the play really is. I love what this piece does for people, particularly women at a certain stage in life. My friend Laura Gayvert told me once that playing the role of Lizzy is like having a chest of drawers with thousands of little drawers and compartments, and when you do this play, “all of the drawers come flying open all at once.” Indeed, I have started a support group for “ex-Lizzy’s” so that they don’t have to traverse alone the difficult emotional terrain this play requires.

What I love most about Maytag Virgin is how Jack is the “best” kind of man. He waits in wonder. He aches for the woman he lost. He longs for Lizzy, but not as much as he longs for the ghosts and demons to be done with him. He lives honorably. He approaches Lizzy respectfully. Even as he teases and needles her, we understand it’s not a mating ritual; it’s an honest man wanting what is best for an honest woman—one that he sees as a friend first, above all else, which is exactly what Lizzy needs after her own devastating loss. It takes the two of them an entire year to finally have a breakthrough, and even then, it’s a lurching/awkward/undignified start that is measured and forthright by the play’s end.

Q: How do you create a character?

I think of a woman hurting, and then I ask her why she’s hurting. I think of a man haunted, and I ask him what he’s running from.

Q: What are some of your favorite pieces of southern slang?

I don’t care much for traditional southern slang. I like to make up my own. That being said, I have been known to start a sentence with, “go get you some,” or “Imma tell ya right now.” In Maytag Virgin, when Lizzy hears some interesting news about Jack going on a blind date, she responds with “Uh oh,” which is one of my favorite lines in the play and a very southern thing to say.

Q: Do you prefer writing more comedic or dramatic scenes? How do you balance the two together?

I don’t think of my scenes as either/or. I’m wanting a good mix of levity and pathos. Grief can be very funny, and comedy is best when it’s deadly serious. The great thing about writing full-length plays is the opportunity for callback and “fruit-flying,” a term I coined a few years back for my Playwright Vocabulary to describe when a character is plagued by a “recurring nuisance.” So, just as in life, even though we may be deep in a moment of anguish, there’s always some relatable thing that reminds us that life, replete with irritants, persists.

Q: Vulnerability and ache are big themes in your plays. What draws you to those as dramatic themes?

Even as I’m known for making people smile and laugh, it must be understood that like most comedians, I have lived much of  my life in a very dark place. I want others to know that it’s not an act of bravery to write this way; it’s just where I live; it’s my currency. Helping my characters work through their grief helps me work through my own.

Q: You have multiple pieces that are all-women southern plays and even a southern queer story. Do you intentionally try to showcase characters of the South that go against stereotypes?

One could argue the term “staunch southern woman” teeters closer to trope than archetype. Presumptions aside, I just have a strong kinship with fierce, flawed women. I like writing female characters at the height of their powers, full-throated and bold. Even the most mild-mannered character in my latest play Trouble has the loudest line in the play, “THAT’S CALLED BEING A MOTHER!”  When a writer digs deep enough, it’s not that hard to find the tender moments of humanity, the universal truths that we all share. The southern aspect of my writing—and not all of my plays are Southern—comes from my desire to explore my roots and to celebrate the unsung working class heroes of the region where I was born and raised. To portray them honestly, without condescension, is not some hobby; it is a privilege.

Q: What do you always hope for in terms of what audiences take away when writing a play?

I want them to see themselves in the story. I want them to feel less alone, less stuck. At the heart of every Cefaly play—even The Gulf, which is an elegy for a dying relationship—is the idea of transcendence. We don’t have to sit around waiting to die. Grief allows us the opportunity to take a personal inventory and ask ourselves, “Who am I now without this?” We get paralyzed in life because we think we need all the answers in order to do the most difficult thing, and so, we wake up each day, frightened and immobilized, with our limited toolbox, not really appreciating that any master plan we come up with doesn’t really factor in all of the tools, opportunities, and solutions awaiting us. We can find our place in the world if we entertain the idea that “our place” may look very, very different from what we (or anyone else that professes to have our best intentions at heart) has in mind.

Describe Maytag Virgin in 5 words or less.

Fun. Tender. Explosive. Poetic. Uplifting.

Audrey Cefaly (Maytag Virgin, The Gulf, Alabaster, The Last Wide Open) authors the Substack newsletter How To Playwright. She is the winner of the Lammy Award, the Calicchio Prize, the NNPN Goldman Prize, the Edgerton, a featured finalist for the Blue Ink Award, and a Pulitzer Prize nominee. She is an alumna of the Playwrights’ Arena cohort at Arena Stage, a recipient of the Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers Conference, and a Dramatist Guild Foundation Traveling Master. Her plays have been produced at theaters such as Cincinnati Playhouse, Florida Studio, Florida Rep, Penobscot Theatre, Gulfshore Playhouse, Merrimack Rep, Signature Theatre, Barter Theatre, Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, Adirondack Theater Festival, B Street Theatre, and Vermont Stage. Her play Alabaster received a 10-city Rolling World Premiere, the largest in NNPN history. More info: www.audreycefaly.com