Baltimore Playwrights Festival

Five Minutes with the Playwright: An Interview with Peter H. Michaels

  • March 11th, 2021
Peter H Michaels
  1. WHEN THE HORNS FALL OFF is a recent play you’ve submitted to The Baltimore Playwrights Festival. What is it about?
    The play is about a man reuniting with friends and strangers after a period of isolation due to a plague that transformed most Americans into horned beasts. While it is not a flat criticism of the sudden upsurge in populism and semi-fascism leading up to the Trump presidency, it more speculates on the issues that would arise in the aftermath of a populist and semi-fascist presidency. I wrote the play before I knew that we would all spend a year (or more) in isolation due to the Coronavirus pandemic, so I guess it was strangely predictive. I also wrote it before knowing that the Trump presidency would end, so in that way it is a hopeful piece.
  2. What are the theatrical benefits and challenges in your choice to have some characters portrayed by puppets?
    I imagined the beasts being somewhat monolithic and unemotional. This would make them both terrifying because they were so inhuman and humorous because when you saw through the artifice, they would be something like paper mâché, Christmas lights, and scraps of fabric. If the puppets were only terrifying or only humorous then it would be a failure, which would have been a narrow path to walk. One practical benefit is the disguising aspect of the puppet keeps the cast size down since not only was the puppet a dual role, they also create a rotating dual role based on which actors were needed on stage.
  3. What playwrights have influenced you and do we see any of this influence in WHEN THE HORNS FALL OFF?
    This piece is heavily influenced by Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. Ionesco wrote Rhinoceros as a response to the sudden upsurge in fascism in Europe that allowed Nazism to flourish before World War II. I think that surrealism is a way to make something appear larger than life or rather, allow an idea the appropriate amount of size to its importance. I think these issues and ideas are so important that we need to grow them on stage to dissect them appropriately.
  4. Tell us about yourself.
    I live outside Annapolis with my wife, daughter, and two dogs (and we have another child due in August). My wife and I have always been into European-style board games and now our daughter has enough reading and math skills to join us. We have a big garden that grows way too much zucchini and amazing bell peppers. I have an engineering degree, law degree and have worked in patent law for a decade. Last year I earned my associate degree in creative writing from Anne Arundel Community College. I write mostly poetry and plays.
  5. What are you working on now?
    I’ve been writing a play that focuses on a dog attack between neighbors. My two dogs were attacked in my backyard by a neighbor’s dog this summer. One of my dog’s had a bruise on their back so deep and damaging that a dollar bill size section of skin died and needed to be dealt with in the hospital and home for over two months. While my neighbors did everything correctly after the fact, thinking about all the alternate ways it could have ended up are fresh in my mind. This feels like a good way to discuss issues in domestic America.
  6. What is coming up next for you?
    During the pandemic I converted our basement into a recording studio and built my own electric octave mandolin. I’ve been writing music for my four-piece (one-man) mandolin orchestra which will play metal folk music – which is decidedly not folk metal music.