Jacqueline Lawton: So, to start could you tell me a little bit about where you live (maybe where and what sort of neighborhood)--describe the street where you live--what can you hear if you open a window, what can you see if you look out that window.
D.W. Gregory: I live in a street two blocks long, in an area called Glenmont Forest. The view from my window is my unweeded vegetable garden and my neighbor's yard, occasionally occupied by a big grey cat.
JL: Then tell me a little bit about your favorite place to write. Do you write in the same place or in different places? Describe your favorite place.
DWG: When we moved up here, I took first dibs on an upstairs bedroom overlooking the backyard. This has been my office for nearly 9 years, and I do most of my work at a small table in a dusty room. Sometimes, however, I work at the dining room table -- when I want to write long-hand, which is frequently; I sit here because there is a big bay window and the room is very sunny, bright, and fills me with a deluded sense of optimism that whatever I generate that day will be worth keeping.
JL: Give us a little background on where you're from originally, where you grew up, how you ended up where you are now...
DWG: Grew up in Pennsylvania, lived in the Midwest and West for several years before coming back East and eventually to Washington, D.C. I came here for work in journalism, and I ended up staying.
JL: Were you always drawn to the theater?
DWG: I've always been a ham actor; writing plays allows me to play all the parts in my head without having to audition for anything.
JL: Describe for me all the sensations you had the first time you had one of your plays produced and you sat in the audience while it was performed...what was different about the characters you created? How much input did you have in the directing of that work?
DWG: General sensation: Sheer terror. I still have panic attacks on opening night.
JL: Who or what inspires you to write? What do you hope to convey in the plays that you write--what are they about? What sort of people, situation, circumstances, do you like to write about?
DWG: I have some kind of genetic disorder that compels me to spend hours by myself in a fantasyland of my own creation. The chief compulsion is to entertain myself; occasionally I produce something that is also entertaining to other people.
JL: What compelled you to write Salvation Road, which we are presenting at Diving Board?
DWG: A friend of mine wanted a play about cults. So I wrote a play 10 years ago that was utterly unremarkable and I threw it in a drawer. About two years ago, he told me he had lined up a production (actually a reading) and I went into a panic realizing people were actually going to see it. So I pulled it out of the drawer and revised it radically. It only took me this long to figure out what story I wanted to tell. The original version was a bore because it was basically a 45 minute infomercial about how to avoid being recruited by a cult. I was much more interested in the mystery of it ... and in the impact of one person's decision on the lives of the people who are left behind, unable to understand what has drawn her in. To me, the compelling question is where you draw the line between faith and fanaticism. Where on this continuum does a church that makes a lot of demands of its followers slip into such dangerous territory that it qualifis as a cult? Where does it become abusive? Or is it that the organization is not the cult--it only becomes a cult in the minds of the susceptible, who allow themselves to be manipulated. Is it possible that in some of these organizations, individuals can stay on, of their own choosing, and derive something beneficial from it?
JL: What's next for you as a writer?
DWG: My comedy, Molumby's Million, opens Nov. 5 at Iron Age Theatre Co. in suburban Philadelphia. And I've got a commission for a new play from New Jersey Repertory Co.
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