Alli Hartley-Kong is an internationally-produced playwright and published poet. By training, she is a public historian and museum educator. A reading of her play Apartment Swap is being presented this season by the BPF. Alli responded to a series of questions posed by BPF Board Advisor Larry Lambert to discuss her career, the play, her writing and her motivation.
L – You have an exceptionally varied and wide-ranging career. As an internationally-produced playwright and published poet, how do you find the time to be a public historian and museum educator?
A – Writing is my true passion and I always manage to make time for the things that are important in my life, but I have to make room for the other opportunities that pay the bills. I spent most of my early twenties focusing on my “first career” in museum education, and I’m very lucky that I have two careers where I get to be creative and connect audiences with humanities content that makes them think and feel.
L – What led you to write Apartment Swap?
A – I share an office with a wonderful colleague, and her daughter lives in Berlin and has the most fantastic life (according to her mother’s stories). A few years ago, this young woman was moving in with her boyfriend and having a hard time finding a two-bedroom apartment, so she enrolled in an apartment swap. She kept meeting all these sad, bitter, divorced people, who she complained about to her mother. When her mother told me this story, I knew–this could be a play! So the play started with the idea of the three “ghosts of bad marriage past.”
My mom is involved in community theatre in New Jersey, and as she’s moved through her life, I’ve noticed there aren’t as many fully-fleshed out roles for older women. So, I wanted to make sure that Lily’s visitors ran the gamut of ages. Finally, I was watching Bridgerton as I was writing this, and the idea of Lily being a writer of romance novels really captivated me. Since I know the history of the suffrage movement so well, it felt like a natural fit for a melodramatic twist once I realized-it could be really fun and theatrical if the characters came to life in her apartment.
L – Are there any actions in Apartment Swap that have occurred during your own life?
A – Definitely- while I’ve never had this exact situation, I occasionally pepper my plays with anecdotes that draw from my real life. I was writing this play when I was new to living to H Street in Washington DC, and parts of the play are a love letter to the good, the bad, and the downright strange of the H Street Corridor–yes, we did have a local screaming man for a while.
L – How long did it take you to go from idea to final product?A – Full length plays usually take me a year or so to write, but Apartment Swap just kind of fell onto the page. When I first started it, I envisioned it would be a one-act play told in three ten-minute scenes of the visitors, but once I made the decision that Lily was going to be an author, the suffrage backstory began taking over. I think I was watching Bridgerton at the time, so that romance history fantasy element was just so fun to explore. I finished the first draft of this play in about twelve weeks– a record for me–then spent a few months revising before submitting it to Baltimore Playwrights Festival and other opportunities.
L – Would you complete a real-world apartment swap and what would you hope to achieve by doing one?
A – Probably not! I don’t like thinking about the people who lived in my apartments before me- I like thinking of each apartment as a clean slate.
L – Of all the activities that you partake of, where would playwriting fit, on a scale of say, 1 to 5?
A – While I love my job and take it seriously, playwriting is my ultimate goal. My family comes first (especially my baby niece!), but playwriting isn’t far behind.
L – What would you like to see your audience take away from this production?
A – While the play is a comedy, I hope audiences leave thinking about the ways that men and women can achieve equality and balance in relationship. I hope it leaves the audience examining how they talk or think about women who don’t live conventional lives, both in 1920 and in today’s world. My favorite line of the play is “Why are kids the only thing that count as family? Why can’t two married people,or like… a lady and her cat—be a family?” and that’s something I’ve been thinking a lot as a person in my thirties who doesn’t yet have kids.
L – Your site notes that your process starts with characters, who you then put in uncomfortable situations. Has this always been your method and do you find it easier than starting with a situation and then populating it with characters?
A – I am really terrible about plot and am driven by characters. A playwright friend of mine has shared some books with me about how in the world of theatre, the idea of a “structurally good” play based on the hero’s journey is a model of storytelling rooted in the patriarchy, and I think about that a lot. As a feminist playwright, I’m really interested in characters–so that’s where I start.
L – You mention placing dramatic storytelling in cultural settings. Can you give us an example?
A – I wrote my first play in 2018, when I was working at a historic house museum. I wanted to create a partnership with a community theatre, and I wanted to explore storytelling in museum settings. So, we created scenes and monologues and situated them throughout the historic house museum. It was a really rewarding project and our audiences were curious to learn more about the history. I’d love to do a project like that again.
L – What’s next on your artistic journey?
A – That’s an excellent question! I’m a year out from opening a major exhibition project at work, so between that and fatigue from the state of the world, I’ve been having a bit of writer’s block lately. So, one way that I’m focusing my artistic energy while having a hard time writing is focusing on the writer’s group that I run and supporting other writers. I have a play that I’ve been working on for a while that I really like Act 1, and then kind of lost the plot in Act 2, so I’m hoping to finish that soon and be able to have a reading. But I’m also hoping to spend more time with my family this year, so who knows?