Cusi Cram is probably known best for her stint on One Life to Live or as a writer for PBS's Arthur. As member of SPACE on Ryder Farm's 2016 resident playwrights group--The Working Farm-- she sat down with the SPACE team to talk about her performance past, current projects, and favorite farm animal:
What is your name and where are you from?
Cusi: My name is Cusi Cram and I’m from New York City
What project are you working on here at SPACE?
Cusi: I’m working on a play that I think is about the relationship between my mother and my father which is a little mysterious to me so I’m making it up.
Were they together when you were growing up?
Cusi: No, they weren’t. I didn’t really know them together. I had very separate relationships with both of them. So, It’s my imagining of them together in a quest to figure out maybe why I am the way I am. [The play] is sort of an investigation of that and other things. Looking to see what that common ground is between them. And they both have pretty interesting lives so also the context around that.
Have you found a favorite spot to work here on Ryder Farm?
Cusi: I like writing in my notebook at the picnic table on [Peach] lake. I’ve done that two or three times. I like that. The main room in here [Kay Hall] is really good. There’s a good studious energy in there.
If you were reincarnated into a farm animal, which farm animal would you like to be?
Cusi: That is a really good question. I have a real love of donkeys. Probably a donkey. There’s just something where I can stare and look at donkeys for a really long time.
What is/are your occupation(s)?
Cusi: I’m a Playwright and I’m also a teacher for playwriting and screenwriting. I also write for Television. I’ve written for cable TV and have a long history writing for kids and kids Television. Mostly animated stuff. I’m also an aspiring filmmaker. I made a film about a year and a half ago and I really loved it. So I’d like to do that again.
How did you start working for Children’s TV?
Cusi: My husband, we were not married at the time, got a gig doing it and he needed some writers so he hired me. He really likes to work with playwrights because he feels they’re not hacky and come at it from a fun perspective. So I got him to hire a lot of other playwrights too.
Arthur in particular is a favorite of mine.
Cusi: Arthur’s great.
Who’s choice was it to go with the Aardvarks?
Cusi: It comes from a children’s book series where Arthur is an Aardvark. It gets a little crazy though because one character is a dog but then he has a dog. So it’s pretty random there isn’t much deep thought about it. They are only animals in how they look. They’re very kid. I think it’s a great kids show because it’s all about neurosis and fears. Which is motivated a lot by my husband. He like to explore them. Also because he get’s writers to explore things that they’re interested in and then see how that translates into the show. I think that’s why it’s lasted such a long time.
There were no latino characters on the show so I wrote in [Arthur's] neighbors that way I think they’re llamas. There’s something that works about how they did the animals without it being too on-the-nose. I think it felt at first kind of random but I think actually makes perfect kid sense. Everybody does find someone they relate to in whatever way that is.
When did playwriting come into your life?
Cusi: I was a bit of a late starter because I started as a performer. I did some playwriting as an undergraduate at Brown. There was a very active new plays grad program Paula Volgel just started teaching there. So I acted also in a lot of new plays. It took me a while. I did other kinds of writing first. I was a fiction writer and I also wrote poetry. Don’t tell anyone here [Laughter]. You know I had also been a writer and a performer but they didn’t necessarily go hand in hand. It was kind of very gradual for me. I started writing things that I performed in that slowly morphed into writing plays I was also gonna perform in. Then I didn’t really want to perform. So I think it was about seven or eight years after I graduated that I started feeling like a Playwright and decided maybe I should go to grad school and investigate it. But it initially came from performing.
Cusi: Oh my gosh, you’ve done your research
Was that a product of performing?
Cusi: No, that was a strange byproduct. My mom was an actress. So I basically started going on commercial auditions to help pay for things and help out. From that I started doing some print work and that lead to modeling.
What was that like being the youngest person in that agency?
Cusi: You know, I really did not like modeling. It was strange, It was a different time. At that time it was very...I remember one person I went in to see told me “It’s a blonde, blue-eyed world.” and I thought “Oh, great” So there weren’t a lot of people who looked like me. Very exotic and very other. Which has obviously changed a great deal. But I didn’t like that very much. It’s always interesting I think to do those kind of things because we always wonder what they’ll be like and fantasize about it. Then to do it and realize it’s really boring and a lot of work, or just so not for me. It took away all that for me. I mean there are worse things, definitely worse things. But it’s definitely not my thing. It made me very self-conscious.
Was the One Life to Live audition something your commercial agent sent you on?
Cusi: Yeah, that was also like another weird world but fun. Sort of my first experience being on set and I liked that aspect. It’s similar to theatre in some ways.
How so?
Cusi: It was a lot of memorization. Things do change very quickly and things are cut suddenly. It moves very fast. They shot an hour episode every day. So you’re doing a tremendous amount in a short amount of time. You get there at 7, you block, you block with cameras, then you start shooting after lunch until you do it. It moves at this pace that I’ve never, either being behind or in front of the camera...nothing moves as fast as that. It was a good experience for getting used to working on camera. That was valuable. Nothing is quite like that though, it’s it’s own thing. Soap Opera is on five times a week.
What’s next for you or any projects you’ve been working on?
Cusi: This summer, I have a play going up in New York at the end of July. A short-ish play, like twenty minutes, with some other plays called “The Helpers”. I had a residency where I was both writing and directing something so this summer I’m doing a workshop of that piece. I’ve been working on it, I call it my slow theatre piece, It’s coming along very slowly, like the slow food movement cause I’m directing it. That will be with LAByrinth Theatre Company where I’m a member. I am also developing a TV show with Laura Linney.
The Working Farm is SPACE’s resident playwrights’ group. This group of eight gathers for a three-to-five week residency (housing, food, and artistic resources provided) on Ryder Farm. While in residence, The Working Farm playwrights each work on a single play. The residency culminates in The Roving Dinner, an eight course meal on eight locations of the farm showcasing excerpts from the eight new plays. Following the residency, SPACE continues its support of The Working Farm by teaming with Playwrights Horizons and ARS NOVA to produce readings of the new plays. Members of the 2016 Working Farm include Eliza Bent, Adam Bock, Alex Borinsky, Cusi Cram, Daisy Foote, Ryan King, Basil Kreimendahl, and James Tyler. Tickets for the Roving Dinner are available HERE.
SPACE on Ryder Farm is a non-profit 501c3 organization. Ticket purchases are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. To make an additional fully tax-deductible donation, please visit http://www.spaceonryderfarm.org/donate.