An Interview With DEAD WHITE MALES’ Bill Downs

He’s a dog person. That’s all you need to know.

Well, maybe a few more bits and pieces would be helpful surrounding William Missouri Downs. An award-winning playwright, Bill startled the imagination with the audacity to write Dead White Males.

Picking people’s brains, particularly artists, culminates in an extraordinary delicacy. Climbing inside their brains for a peak at what they think and how they think serves an incredible taste of imagination.

Setting up an interview with an unfamiliar force also spells trepidation. Not all creative people like to talk. Yes and no answers are anything but helpful. It goes with the territory.

Bill was expecting my phone call at 1:00 PM. Where would he be? What would he be doing? Sitting at his desk in a suit and tie? Lounging out by the pool? Riding horseback mending fences? Researching a new play? Glancing at his watch, chomping at the bit to get back to work? To cut through the ice, if there was any ice to cut through, I would find out right off the bat. Contemplating the question proved totally unnecessary.

Cleaning the kitchen, he was. That’s how the subject of dogs crept into the conversation. Cleaning my kitchen straddled my agenda. My year and a half old black lab puppy discovered how to open the refrigerator devouring leftovers.

Driving through a down pouring rain in east Denver on his way to have dinner with an actor friend, a black something ran in front of his car. He stopped. A once beloved chow mix dog by the name of Valerie had gone on to the Big Bone In The Sky. He thought he saw Val. Picking up the drenched, scared dog; Bill took the time to walk around the neighborhood to see if she belonged to anyone. She didn’t. He called his wife Lou Anne, and told her he had Val. She told him to come home immediately.

The next morning when they had a chance to really look at her, they knew it wasn’t Val, but looked a great deal like her. She was chow and dachshund. Bill has no clue how that could happen, but he did have an intriguing interpretation. She’s 12-years-old. Her name is Laree, after Val, and they call her La La. Bill even knew about a rare chow disease where black chows develop white spots on their heads and around their mouth. He laughs over ever losing La La. He wouldn’t know how to describe her if she changed color in the process.

Bill teaches playwriting and screenwriting at UW with Lou Ann, a Professor of Voice and Dialects. He just finished another play, After Matthew, reflections on Laramie following Matthew Sheppard’s incomprehensible death.

Growing up in Bay City, Michigan, he was given the name Missouri in honor his great, great grandmother.

The love of the theatre took him to the University of Illinois where he holds an M.S.A. in acting. In spite of his studies, he says no one had the nerve to tell him he wasn’t very good. He figured out for himself he wasn’t going to make a living on the boards. He loved the theatre, and wanted to be a part of it somehow, so zeroed in earning his second M.S.A. in playwriting. There, he had a professor who tripped over his own nerve, telling Bill he wasn’t a playwright, and there wasn’t anything he could do to make him into one.

A friend planned taking him to a playwriting workshop where Milan Stitt was speaking. He had a play he wanted Stitt to look at. After the professor’s comment, the script went into the trashcan. His friend literally dug the script out of the trash, and they went to hear Stitt. Bill had opportunity to show the script to Stitt, who suggested they meet the next day. Stitt, who now teaches the dramatic writing program at Carnegie Mellon University, promised Bill to get him in touch with Circle Rep in New York where he could work, study, and hob nob with playwrights. So much for professors who want to cross out talent with a single sentence. Bravo for friends who know talent when they see it.

He spent time in Los Angeles writing scripts for My Two Dads, Amen, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, winning the Jack Nicholson award for screenwriting, and sold the film Executive Privilege to Tri-Star.

Wanting to return to his first love, the theatre and playwriting, he found his way to Colorado, and then to Laramie. He has written 13 plays, and authored two books: Playwriting from Formula To Form and Screenplay: Writing the Picture.

Playwriting is a hard, tough existence he admits, and he insists he tries to get away from it. As long as the theatre muse sits on his head, dangling ideas in front of him, I don’t think any of us have to worry he will dodge the inspirational playwriting bullet anytime soon. With the cutting of funds for the arts, he has watched the theatrical landscape change. It now takes grit and courage to get new plays produced. Audiences prefer the tried and true, even though they may have seen a particular play a zillion times. Taking the risk to see a new play employs gambling with the ticket price. So committed to his craft, he refused royalty from Miners Alley Playhouse. He wants the play on stage where it belongs. Laughing softly, he chatted about the enormous number of theatres who decide to produce plays without asking permission, much less pay royalties.

Once while traveling, Lou Ann discovered in a local paper one of his plays was running in a theatre 20 miles away that he didn’t know anything about. He called for reservations for that night. When the voice on the other end asked him for his name, and he gave it to her, there was a long silence, then the plaintiff plea, “Please don’t shut us down.” Bill told her he wouldn’t, but he thought the least they could do was to give him comp tickets. She did.

Another time he was attending a production of one of his plays, saying it was badly produced, directed, and acted. During Intermission he snuck out, went across the street to a bar where a glass of wine was $9.00, and ran up an $82.00 bar bill for fortification to face the cast after the show.

No bitterness, no anger flows from this soft-spoken writer, only amused concern for the development of live theatre.

So where did Dead White Males come from? His mother was a teacher, his father a professor, and his sister a substitute teacher. His sister called one day to tell him the weirdest thing happened. A student walked into a classroom with a gun, asked for the teacher, was told she went home sick, and the student said, “Then you’ll have to do,” shooting and killing her. Bill began interviewing and just talking to teachers, building a file. One day he looked at the very large file, saw the epic unfold before him, and Dead White Males swam out of the artistic birth canal into life. Every scenario in Dead White Males actually happened. All he needed to do, with his brilliant word master style, was weave them around and through his carefully constructed characters.

This amiable, conscientious writer flirts with wanting to bring playwrights back into the ensemble. He fully recognizes a production on the east coast, west coast, and mid-west can have tangible differences. The staging on a large stage verses a small intimate stage, cries for adaptation. Different casts with different energy cries for adaptation. He can’t always do it, and he readily admits he isn’t always wanted, but when he can, he likes to be a part of the production so he can adapt his script to fit the needs of the production team. Rick Bernstein at Miners Alley Playhouse embraced this philosophy, as did the cast for their current Dead White Males production. Getting to meet him eyeball to eyeball on Opening Night took some waiting. He was as nervous as a squirrel up a tree with a cat, walking around. With his curly hair and sandal-clad feet. Walking and listening to what people have to say, quenches his thirst for improving scripts.

Bill has a legend of stories to tell. He will be returning to Miners Alley for the Industry Night, September 19 when all proceeds go to the victims of Katrina. Go. The money will be well spent for people who have no place to go, having nothing to carry with them while they wait for a place to go to. You’ll see a biting, humorous, extraordinarily written play sending its own inspirational claws clinging to your spine, with opportunity to meet and hob nob with this gentle spirit who writes graciously, clutching a double edged sword.

After a performance at Dead White Males inaugural production, he left the theatre. Everyone gone, the house dark, he noticed a woman crying. He asked her if she was all right. She said, “ThatŐs my life. That play is my life.” Taken back, Bill replied, “But itŐs a comedy.” To which she answered, “Not for teachers it isn’t.” One theatre’s motto was “A tragedy for teachers, a dark comedy for everyone else.”

That can be debated. In just about every field of vital importance, the world of controlling political schemes, mixed messages, and eternal games of rules strangles creativity focused on a smooth running machine gasping for oiled passion.

Bill Downs is a dog person. Nothing more needs to be said, but oh, it’s so much fun to do so.