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my process for writing plays really it can be sparked by anything the initial idea i mean in general i deal with issues of of race and class societal structures uh really the pursuit of love not necessarily romantic although it can be that within certain characters in certain pieces but just in general how we treat each other right why do we feel the way we feel how do we arrive at our conclusions how do we change how do we grow how do we not and why so i could be watching you know some cable news or i could be on the street taking a walk and the bus drives by with an ad for something and it sparks an idea usually for me dialogue is first like a character would just start talking to me i'll have an idea in my mind of things that i usually talk about and then some character would just say hey blah blah blah blah blah and i write that down and then another character will say blah blah blah blah blah and then we're off and running this is you know and after after that initial bolt of energy then i'm like okay let me start to shape this what am i what are these characters what is this story actually about and from that point i'll go back and start new and go forward until i have a draft this is kari wyatt playwright uh if you'd like to learn more about my play and the other zip code players that my piece is a part of and support antennas theater company watch this video i think they chose podcasts right now because that's kind of the the latest zeitgeist like a lot of places are doing audio plays and i think it was a way for uh ante is to incorporate actors and directors and use a different form that people have been used to previously and for me i loved it actually it was always a dream of mine to have an audio play when i was growing up as a kid i used to go to books when i would go to bookstores and buy books certain bookstores also sold tapes of old time radio shows and i used to buy those and listen to them you know i go home and i wait till the night and i would turn off all the lights and put this tape in my boom box and i would listen to this you know this audio play from 1945 or 1948 or 1955 you know the shadow and suspense theater and all those types of things you know jack benny and i'm like oh wow this is awesome because it sparked so much imagination in the listener you know what are they wearing what do they look like how tall is that guy you know what does that woman really look like you know what kind of car is that that joke that you heard the horn honk you know what's actually happening in the city what's that block look like what's that house look like so it really even though you're getting a story and you're getting a beginning middle and end and you and you have all the sound effects and whatever music cues are involved it really in an easy way makes the listener a part of the story you're you're in that club you're in that house when that burglar comes you know you are next to that ghost who is next to the guy who you're listening to you're in that you're in that field when the aliens are coming down you know so it makes the it makes the listener a part of the story you're an actor in that story your imagination is drawing you into that story and it's because it's just voices and and and and effects you know so it was always a dream of mine so when i got selected i was overjoyed because i had been thinking actually doing on my own and funded and lo and behold this opportunity came and so thank god the idea came originally uh kitty swank and bill brock trump the artistic directors of the antes put out a call to the playwrights lab that they were going to be doing audio plays based around zip codes in los angeles and the idea basically was to give people slices of different areas of the city slices of life from different areas of the city and i chose for my pitch south central los angeles you know predominantly black area of town black brown area of town i felt like that was a place i would like to focus my story and so i submitted the pitch by the deadline which was this past summer in july and i was blessed to be selected and from there the idea basically came about because i read a book by donald bogle who's a historian filming film historic film and television historian black man called bright boulevard bold dreams and the book basically encapsulated the history of black hollywood from the 1920s up until like the late 1950s and all the people in and around black hollywood and all the businesses and owned business owners and things such as that in this section of central avenue around the dunbar hotel specifically which was like the hub of black life in los angeles up through about the late 40s you know in the early 50s until integration happened and then people started to you know drift to other parts of the city to live to go to clubs on sunset strip and other places in los angeles which kind of killed the community a lot of businesses closed down and things just changed people moved out of the neighborhood things went downhill crime got ris raised up by that and so i thought of that book and i'm like you know what let me talk about people of that time period the late 50s when things had changed and just give people a slice of life of a few characters from this neighborhood and so that's where the idea came from originally out of that book and wanting to incorporate that area of the city and incorporate also a little bit of history not just of that area but of america in that time period it's about a black man who wants to be an author who went to paris and returns from paris after a year a year and a half and finds the wife that he left is not the same woman that he left behind and so that's the that's the crux of it and what happens when he returns and finds that his wife is different has changed has been changed by what's going on in america and her reaction to how he has changed from actually pursuing his dream somewhere else without her and then returning into the mix i would love for the audience to get out of the play a sense of the time the late 1950s in this particular community how things changed in the broad sense how individuals could have been affected in another sense because of the racism of the time because of the the blocks the roadblocks to opportunities to dreams and also historical context for what's going on in america in a broader sense without giving away too much part of what's going on in the play is related to the montgomery bus boycott in alabama and there's a plot point that deals with what's happening in south central and its relation to the montgomery bus boycott in alabama so i want people to get a sense of the time and space the racial climate the social climate through these individual characters and how much is relatable to what's going on today unfortunately although a lot of things have gotten better the undergird of racism has remained and now it seems like we're going a little bit not even a little bit we're going backwards and now it's become suitable again for the racists to be loud about it and we have someone in the white house who's supposedly supposed to be the leader of america who purposely i believe he is a white nationalist and this is why he does what he does but at the very least curry's wants to curry favor with white nationalism because they support him and because they support him he doesn't want to do anything or say anything against that i think that he doesn't say anything against it because he is that as a department of justice lawsuit against him and his father for housing discrimination all the way back in the 70s at tests so that's what i want people to get out of it how things the the climate of the times and how it's relatable to today you know the other playwrights i've known them through the playwrights lab so i know how extremely talented they are and i'm really looking forward to seeing how they handle the subject matter in their plays you know us angela j davis nana aguava deb height uh alex goldberg and steve surpass and their and their zip codes run the gamut from santa monica sun valley pacific palisades downtown los angeles and uh westwood and they're various some are some are magical realism some are historical and i'm really looking forward to see how they handled those stories i don't want to give away their stuff but i just wanted to mention them because you know some there's some besides my play there's five other great players that are coming to you i would love for for the audience to come and find my play and the other zip code plays because what you're gonna get is a diverse group of voices in age ethnicity talking about various characters specific to the zip codes that they deal with in the areas of town that they deal with in los angeles and if you're angelino some things are going to be familiar you're going to learn some things about areas of the city that you didn't know and if you're from out of the out of the city across the country you're going to learn some stuff about los angeles historical things that some things i was surprised to learn in other people's place and so i i feel like you're going to get a diverse body age gender ethnicity and some really compelling characters and within those characters and extending outward stories that pull you in hey this is kari wyatt playwright and i just want you to come and and and support the zip code plays produced by ante as theater company uh debuting on november 12th on various podcast systems spotify apple and also on the antes website and you can hear slices of los angeles through myself and five other wonderful plays from five other playwrights who are based here in los angeles and doing theater here in los angeles and we would love your support you