“Hang Time,” a play by Pulitzer finalist Zora Howard, will be performed this Saturday at ASU Gammage.
The play depicts three Black men, hanging in a tree. A breeze blows intermittently, and their bodies sway as they give monologues and have conversations about their lives.
Howard joined The Show to talk about writing the play, and said her goal was to channel the humanity of her characters.
Full conversation
ZORA HOWARD: I think so much of writing is listening. And when you meet these characters, or they meet you, they find you, and they kind of come with a story if you are letting them lead. I found that to be the most productive way of writing is to not try to get my words out through the vehicle of character, but to let the character speak.
And sometimes they will not say the things that you want them to say. So it can be very frustrating in a lot of the a lot of ways I feel I don't know if this is right or wrong. I kind of feel passive as a writer, as I'm just kind of a record keeper.
DINGMAN: So can I ask you, when it comes to the conceit or the presentation of these three men in particular, did you first start to hear their stories and write those down, or did the concept of the three of them together in this uncertain environment, did that idea come to you first, or did their stories and their voices come to you first?
HOWARD: The concepts came first.
DINGMAN: OK.
HOWARD: And that's usually the way it is with me. I had a colleague and a she was actually a showrunner on a room that I was one time, and she introduced this vocabulary that I found very useful about whether you're a worm or a bird, you're the kind of person that sees the larger picture first and then kind of has to dive in and get to the details and the, you know, minutia of it all. And if you're a worm, you do the opposite, you know, you start in the weed, you start in the dirt, and then it might, you know, from there, you build out the larger picture so interesting. I do feel, pretty consistently, as a writer, that I'm of the bird kind.
DINGMAN: I am never going to forget that. Thank you for sharing that.
HOWARD: I never forgot it either. I was like, wow, that just really helped me a lot describing my practice.
DINGMAN: Absolutely, absolutely well. Let's take that idea and apply it to our three characters in hang time. We have Slim, Blood and Bird. There are moments of great specificity that really stay with me for each of those characters. For me with Bird, it's when he starts he has the moment where he talks about Beverly.
(Audio from play)
DINGMAN: We don't really know who Beverly is, but it's clear that Beverly is really important to him with Blood, it's when he talks about wanting to swim in various bodies of water.
(Audio from play)
DINGMAN: And for Slim for me, I think it's when he sings.
(Audio from play)
DINGMAN: Those moments are all so uniquely human. How did you know when you had really arrived at something true about each of these men as you were making a record? As you put it, do you do like, experience that in your body as you're writing? Like, how do you know? Like, yes, this is this is it?
HOWARD: I mean, I do think some of it is spiritual, if I'm being completely honest about the pro like, when I'm in it, when the writing is actually happening, it's hard for me to describe, you know, what exactly is going down, because I don't fully understand it myself. There is a point where everything in you is vibrating. That's when I think the writing comes most freely. So I'm not struggling against something or like forcing words, but they're just coming that moment, or those moments when you're like, This is something true and this is something I have to protect in the story with each of the characters. Yeah, it does feel like an embodied thing. Like, yeah, those are the things I'll fight for. Obviously, with every project, there are things that you fight for, things that you must go.
DINGMAN: I have to say it's, it's eerie to hear you use that way of describing it when we're talking about this play in particular, because it strikes me. Each of these men, as we watch the show, it is when they are expressing themselves most truly and most honestly, that we see them start to struggle. We start to see their breath literally being cut off from their bodies.
HOWARD: And that is the violence that these men were full of life and full of hopes for the future and dreams and regrets and in deep relationships and all of that kind of just was flattened. So the violence is centered. It is center stage. There's no way around it, and there's nowhere else to look but the men unto whom this violence was enacted. They are men. You have to look at the two in tandem, I think, is what the play is after, you know, because if this, if you saw one of these men on the street corner, you know, passing you as you were on the way to the grocery store, violence is still hovering very close to their bodies, You know, and that's the thing that I I want us to face. That's the thing that I'm trying to reconcile.
DINGMAN: Well Zora Howard is the playwright of Hang Time, which is what we've been discussing. And Hang Time will be playing at ASU Gammage on April 19. Zora, thank you for this conversation.
HOWARD: Thank you Sam. It was a great time.
