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CARIDAD SVICH: At "Shaping the Future of the American Voice," a Latina/o playwrights panel in November 2003 at INTAR in New York, you spoke about the importance of writing texts "that are fluid in their meaning and yet permanent in their existence." How do you keep yourself alert to un-fixing meaning in your plays and thereby allowing multiple meanings to co-exist?
KAREN ZACARÍAS: I have discovered that the best way to keep a text un-fixed in its meaning is to be uneasily uncertain of exactly what I'm trying to say. I always think of writing as an exploration, not a forgone conclusion... and it isn't until after the piece is "done" that I discover the various themes that have been nagging at me. This means during the process, I have to learn to trust my characters, let them breathe, be vulnerable, funny, ruthless, and contradictory. More often than not, my characters lead me to a plot, to the story, not the other way around. I have images of certain moments in the play, but am not always sure how to get there. I sometimes envy playwrights who sit down with a narrative and know where they are going. I have done that in the past, but usually I don't work with a map, so I get lost, must retrace my steps, go back to the beginning. Occasionally, however, my characters land in the most interesting of territories.
Your work is distinguished by a sense of formality and a lively humor. Writing comedic work takes great skill. Would you talk a bit about the finer points of developing and strengthening your comedic voice as a writer?
Predictability is deadly in story telling and I find humor to be one of the most effective ways to create tension, surprise, and connection between the audience, the characters, and the story. Subtle humor is one of the best ways to disarm an audience and create an attachment that will allow them to follow the characters to darker, starker areas. Humor humanizes. If it is used organically, it is one of the most powerful tools a writer has to create gut-wrenching drama.
You come from an artistic family in Mexico. So, in a sense, you're working in the family business....