In September, an Out Magazine national roundup of the 10 must-see stage plays of the season singled out Steve Yockey’s world premiere of “Wolves” at Actor’s Express.
“It called me ‘young playwright Steve Yockey,’” said the 35 year-old Atlanta native, “and my Facebook wall lit up with friends saying, ‘Young?’”
Fans of Atlanta theater probably still think of Yockey as a young writer as well. Yockey was still in his 20s when he launched his first black comedies and dark dramas at Dad’s Garage and Out of Hand Theatre, companies founded by energetic college graduates that persistently appeal to youthful audiences.
In his early works such as Dad’s Garage’s “Swallow,” a monologue about autoerotic asphyxiation, Yockey challenged conventions and pushed viewers out of their comfort zones. In 2008 Yockey premiered his hit “Octopus” at Actor’s Express and with “Wolves,” which opens Nov. 10, he promises to reveal new depths as a writer while continuing to flirt with taboos.
Yockey currently resides in Los Angeles, but he grew up in Alpharetta and spent many of his artistic formative years as an intern at Actor’s Express and, later, as marketing director of Dad’s Garage.
“It’s a homecoming of sorts,” said Actor’s Express artistic director Freddie Ashley, who’s excited to be producing “Wolves” as part of the theater’s 25th anniversary season. “Steve is intrinsically a part of Actor’s Express. The anniversary season would have been incomplete without him.”
Directed by Melissa Foulger and starring Clifton Guterman, Brian Crawford and Joe Sykes, “Wolves” wraps fairytale imagery around a stark, stripped-down confrontation.
“Very seldom do I pull things directly from my personal life into my writing,” said Yockey, who made “Wolves” an exception. “It’s about a gay couple who’s broken up but still living together, because they can’t afford to live apart.”
Beyond that initial premise, the action strays violently from his life experience.
“It’s about the night that one of them brings a new guy home to the apartment and how it goes as wrong as it could possibly go,” he said. “Including a lot of blood. And it’s wrapped up by a storybook narrator (played by Kate Donadio).”
Yockey emphasizes that serious themes underpin the play’s thriller-style plot points.
“It’s about the confluence of sex and fear in modern society and the idea of what increasingly isolating ourselves from the outside world can generate,” he says. “Sex and violence are not themes in my work; they’re a means to an end.”
While Yockey wrote such innovative shows as Out of Hand Theater’s “Cartoon” in 2006 as an Atlantan, he feels his work improved significantly thanks to his studies at New York University’s Tisch School for the Arts, where he earned an MFA in 2008.
“Before I went to grad school, I wrote for production, to get a show up. I knew that if I kept a show small and producible, people will put it on,” said Yockey. He stopped restricting his imagination when one of his professors encouraged him to write what he’s passionate about, no matter the potential limitations of the stage.
“Because of her, the play I wrote was ‘Octopus,’ which I thought no one would do, because it has hundreds of gallons of water on stage,” he said. “But it’s been produced all over the country. People figure it out.”
The prestigious play publisher Samuel French Inc. has published many of Yockey’s scripts and theaters in such exotic locales as Argentina and Malaysia have produced them. But he’s yet to make a New York debut, sticking to a strategic decision to build a national reputation before trying to take Manhattan.
In addition to working as a playwright, Yockey teaches at the California Institute of the Arts and also writes television scripts, which include an adaptation of Tama Janowitz’s novel “Slaves of New York” and a half-hour dark comedy set in a dental practice in Inman Park.
Yockey returns to the Atlanta area about twice a year to visit his parents and relishes reconnecting with old friends and collaborators with “Wolves.”
“It’s exciting because it’s their anniversary season and I’ve been enmeshed with Actor’s Express for so long. So much of my work was shaped by what Wier Harman and Jason Minadakis did at that theater,” said Yockey, giving a shout-out to the company’s previous artistic directors.
He finds himself in no hurry to relocate from Los Angeles.
“There’s this idea that in order to be successful in theater, you have to live in New York or Chicago, but that’s something you can disprove through trials and tribulations,” he said. “Being successful in theater means doing successful theater wherever you are.”
Theater preview
Wolves. Nov. 10-Dec. 2. 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday., 2 p.m. Sunday. $24. Actor’s Express, 887 W. Marietta St, Suite J-107 , Atlanta. 404-607-7469. http://www.actors-express.com/
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