John Russo)

Note: the interview includes spoilers from the entirety of the play.

Katie Buenneke, Neon Tommy: How has the transition from acting to writing been?
Jesse Eisenberg: Well, I write when I am not working on a project as an actor, more specifically when I am not working for a long time, because it allows me practice another related skill set.

NT: Some people who have seen the show pronounce the title ah-soon-see-ohn, as the character’s name is pronounced in the show (and like the Paraguayan city), but others call it a-sun-shun, like a play on the word “assumption.” When you read the title of the play to yourself, how do you pronounce it?
JE: All of those are correct, you know the Filipino pronunciation would be the second one you mentioned, but the characters, being American, would pronounce it in the traditional Spanish pronunciation, cause that’s what they would have been exposed to.

NT: What made you want to stage Asuncion as a play? Why not go down what seems to be the more typical Hollywood route and make a low-budget indie?
JE: The story, the structure, the character, and the dialogue lend themselves very distinctly to a play; it emphasizes taking place in one room, the structure is a typical two act structure, with a week passing time in between, it has a few characters who all have backstories and full roles. You know, when you make a movie, it tends to follow a different kind of narrative structure, and that just wouldn’t lend itself as well to that medium.

NT: Do you have any plans for the future regarding Asuncion?
JE: Yeah, we got offered to do it in Philippines, just a short run in the Philippines, and I think that would just be a great, fun thing to do for us. I’m kind of secondarily curious to see how another audience takes it, especially a Filipino, but most of all, it would just be so exciting to be able to do it in a year from now in a whole cast. But it would be the same cast.  

NT: A lot of movie and TV actors like to distinguish themselves by doing play work and theatre work in LA, have you thought about doing that?
JE: I think you might be referring to actors that live there, and so therefore that’s why they do it there, but I don’t live in Los Angeles, and I go there so infrequently that, for me, if I wanted to do a play, it’s better to just stay home in New York, that’s where I’m from, that’s where I live. But I can understand why actors who live in California do theatre there. 

NT: What compels you about each character?
JE: I could really relate to all the characters in the play. I think they’re all kind of arguing with each other, but I think they’re all, in their own way, coming from a decent place. My character demonizes everything American and everything that is popular because he feels so horrible about plight of those less fortunate than him. He’s coming from a slightly misguided place, but it’s not malicious. His roommate, Vinny, also feels sense of guilt about the plight of those less fortunate, but instead of constantly apologizing, he adopts that culture, he thinks of himself as somebody who feels comfortable adopting black culture, for example. And the other man in the play, Stuart, who’s my brother, he is a guy who doesn’t apologize for himself or for his behavior, he works in the financial industry, but he doesn’t apologize for it. He also doesn’t do anything wrong, which is revealed at the end of the play, that he’s actually not doing anything wrong, and that the only person really doing something wrong is my character, the character that is demonizing everybody else. And then finally, I could relate to Asuncion, the girl, the woman in the play, because she views America in an optimistic way, she sees America as a wonderful country views America as a wonderful country that has adopted the best things from the rest of world. She compares it to a pop song—a pop song is short and fan, and she says American culture is like a pop song, it’s taking the best three minutes from a Beethoven song and put it into one song, and that’s what America is, it takes the best three minutes from the rest of the world and puts it into one country. And there’s something nice about that idea too, and I can also really relate to that, and I think it’s a nice way to view things. So even though all characters are in conflict with each other, I think they’re all coming from a place that I could defend, either as a writer or, in my case as an actor in that one role.

NT: A brief glance at your IMDb page reveals that you seem to be a very in-demand actor. How do you choose which projects to pursue?
JE: Well, as an actor, a lot of that is luck, just something coming along at the right time. As an actor, you’re in control of the work you do while you’re acting, but a lot of the broader career stuff happens, it feels to me at least, at random, and so I’ve gotten lucky to be in some wonderful things. A few of those things I’ve acted in, I developed over the course of a few years, and I’m still doing that now. I’m signed onto a few projects that maybe I read, and as an actor, I think, “Well, there’s potential there for a great role, or a great story, but it doesn’t feel fully realized,” and if allowed, I’m able to work with the people who are making the movie to realize it in a better way, and then just logistically, I knew I wanted to do this play at this time, so I didn’t sign on to shoot any movie roles or anything, and I just made sure to be free during this period for the play, and so I ended up doing a different set of movie roles, because I wanted to accommodate this schedule, so part of it is also just logistics.

NT: Many people say that to be an actor, one has to see a little bit of him or herself in every character or person he or she encounters. How do you think this translates to writing?
JE: Oh, that’s a great question, and I think it probably applies as well. In a play, where there’s only room for a few characters, I think it’s important, at least for me, to see myself in all of those characters that I’m writing. In a movie, where there can be room for hundreds of characters, and lot of them don’t have that much to say or do, it might be less important, but I feel like with a play like this, where there are only four characters, and each of them are very specifically drawn and have individual backstories and motives, I think it’s important to sympathize with, or at least understand where each character is coming from, because it makes the characters more real, and it makes the conflicts more interesting, because you’re not just watching somebody who’s right and somebody who’s wrong, or somebody who’s good and somebody who’s bad, but you’re watching an interesting debate. One of the ways I’ll do that is to think of people who I know, and try to write from their voice. If I know them, and I’m friends with them, I obviously like something about them, and sympathize with something about them, so it makes it that much easier. So even a Filipino girl I don’t have that much access to, I wrote based on somebody I knew and somebody I really liked, so even though she’s saying things in the play that go against what my character says, or what I might personally say, I completely understand where she’s coming from, because I based it on this woman who I had a lot of affection for.

NT: Who would you say are some of your greatest creative influences?
JE: I really like some playwrights that I was reading when I was writing this play. There were two plays that I got to act in, one was by a woman named Lucy Thurber, I think she’s a great playwright, and I really like the writer named Craig Wright, he’s also a really good playwright. I really like the plays and films of Woody Allen. When I started writing this play, I was trying to write a dark drama, but I think my sense of humor is derived more from somebody like Woody Allen’s, so it’s kind of a strange mixture of both dark drama, that you might see more traditionally off-Broadway, and the lighter humor of a Woody Allen-type piece.

NT: Yeah, I definitely got a very humorous side to it, though there were obviously some pretty dark moments in the show, like the end of the first act. Obviously, that’s a very “dramatic” place to end the act, but how did you decide to end the first act there?
JE: I was trying to do a few things. One is to show that this character that I play really has difficulty going out in the world, so much so that every time he goes out in the world, the world beats him up. And then I wanted the other two characters to start bonding, because the second act really becomes about my character being marginalized, and writing this story about this girl who is not really a mail-order bride. I wanted to end first act in a not just dramatic way, but also a theatrically heightened way, where the lights can shift, where the music can change, and where something that might not happen naturally can happen, like my character coming in bleeding and them dancing, bathed in a strange light. I thought it would be a kind of interesting and provocative way to end the act and foreshadow what’s to come, which is that these two characters, Vinny and Asuncion, will bond really at the expense of Edgar, who can’t even go outside and get a bagel.

NT: How did you go about casting and picking a creative team for the show?
JE: When I was writing the play, I was friends with Justin Bartha, who plays Vinny, and I was I guess unconsciously writing for his voice. A lot of things he says in play were things I could imagine him saying to me while I was writing it. I had seen Remy, who plays my brother, in a show while I was writing it, so I kept him in mind. And then Camille, we got really lucky looking for somebody, she’s so singularly talented in so many specific way. The character of Asuncion has to navigate so many different personas. My character has to see her as a victimized, trafficked woman, but my brother has to see her as a confident businesswoman and wife, Vinny sees her as a best friend and she’s able to do all of those things in a realistic and really entertaining way.

NT: Going back to Vinny, one of the things that most intrigued me about his character is that he’s seems to live simultaneously in a world of total ambiguity and total clarity, so how did you juggle that?
JE: Yeah, I’m always interested in people who claim to have a very clear sense of morality, when, to an outsider, who’s not intimidated, it appears to change to suit his or her own needs. I find it very disconcerting, because I feel like I have a vulnerable sense of moral conviction, I’m always questioning what I’m doing, and wondering if it’s the right thing to do, and sometimes I’ll meet people, people who seem to me to be something not right, but doing it with such great conviction.  And it can be a scary character, because the other characters don’t know where they stand with him, especially my character. I’ll say something something, and it’ll be right, and it’ll be funny, and it’ll be good, and next time I say it, it will be a great sin to have said something. So it keeps me off balance, and I thought those characters could have interesting drama between them. And also the different ways these characters view the world. My character views people as victims if they’re from any sort of specific demographic that he deems a “victim” demographic. And Vinny’s perspective on people seems to change, and so my character’s rigidity is really contrasted well with his, like how you described it, arbitrary but then concrete moralism.

NT: If you couldn’t play Edgar, who would you pick to play him?
JE: I don’t know, it’s not something I ever considered. I don’t really think about it, I don’t really think about casting part of it so much. We didn’t even hold auditions for the play, it doesn’t interest me so much to see so many different takes on it, I kind of hear something specific in my mind and just want to make sure it’s executed in that way, so I didn’t want to hold auditions or see different takes on it. I just thought if something felt right, we just went with it, and then tried to shape it. We, I mean the director and I, Kip Fagan.

NT: Are you interested in directing a play, either a self-written one, or one written by someone else in the future?
JE: I don’t know if I really can do it, because directing requires a level of patience and accounting for personalities in a way that I don’t know that I can do. The director of this play, Kip Fagan, he sat in a rehearsal room for over a month just watching, and without blinking, noted ever detail, and was able to shape something that is totally very specific and have to account for what I’ve written and have to account for the acting of everyone, all of the actors. It’s a real invisible art form. He did such a good job, don’t think I could ever do that well, so I would probably not pursue it so soon.

NT: What was the rehearsal process like as both an actor and the author?
JE: It was nerve-wracking. Before you get in front of an audience, you don’t know how it will play. Mostly the play plays comedically, we’ll have some nights that are quiet, I don’t know which night you saw, but we’ll have some nights that are very loud, some nights are more quiet, when you’re in the rehearsal room, it’s silent. It can be really off-putting to not know how what you’re practicing will be received. And then I was also looking to re-write, because during the rehearsal process it’s typical for the writer of a play to re-write the play, but as an actor, I didn’t really have the luxury to step out and see how it looks, cause I was in it, so I had to rely on Kip and he was wonderful, kind of being my extra set of eyes. It’s just a lot of work, but it’s good, good work.

NT: I saw it Tuesday night, actually, when it was super rainy.
JE: That night kind of played quiet, but then the next night, there was laughter on every joke to the point of almost being weirdly distracting. So it’s very strange. We don’t know until we get out there what we’re going to have to do, and how we’re going to have to modify our own acting for it. Thanks for coming out in the rain, though!

NT: What is your favorite challenge about acting for theater as opposed to for film?
JE: Well, when you do a play, you get to live the whole story every night. When you do a movie, you do it in such small pieces that you really don’t get that kind of catharsis of going through a character’s story of being happy about something and having your hopes dashed in the same moment. That kind of stuff can be very fulfilling in a play, and really lacking in a movie. The challenge, though, is that if something doesn’t go well, it’s official, it’s onstage, whereas if something doesn’t go well in a movie, you do it again. You know, on the other hand, if something doesn’t go well, and you don’t do it again in a movie, it’s there forever, so it can be disconcerting. So there can be different challenges. The main thing for me is how comfortable I feel with the project and with the role. If I can feel comfortable with the project and the role, and I feel like I understand what it’s trying to say and what I’m trying to say in it, then the medium is irrelevant.

NT: The play deals with some important ideological issues. What prompted you to write about them?
JE: Well, it’s all the stuff I think about, the characters. I grew up in a pretty sheltered neighborhood. And then when I became a young adult, I started traveling to poorer countries, and I immediately started thinking, “Oh God, these people must all be victims,” and “These people must all be sad.” And then I realized, well, that’s a pretty condescending and narrow way to think about things. Different cultures think of things in their own ways. And so when I was writing my character, a guy who thinks of culture and class and race in very black and white terms, I’m kind of exploring my own ignorance about those issues. And in a way, the play allows me to grow, because I’m hearing my own ignorances about some important issues, and issues that I think about a lot. And the play is just an exploration of that, and I hope that I’m able to do it in a funny way and an entertaining way, so that it’s not some kind of indulgent diatribe, or just me reading my own diary entries, I play with other characters and structure.

NT: Which part of the play did you have the most fun writing?
JE: I liked writing the scenes in second act when Vinny and Asuncion are really enjoying each others’ company at Edgar’s expense. Edgar can try to do all the things that Vinny and Asuncion do, but just for some reason, on him it’s wrong or not funny or very dumb or boring. So they could do an impression of a woman they saw in a grocery store, and it’s the funniest thing for them, but when Edgar tries to do the impression, it’s just wrong, even though the impression is an arbitrary, nonsensical voice, but when Edgar does it, it sounds totally wrong and incorrect. And that stuff’s fun to write because it’s a dynamic you see all the time, when there’s a triangle and two people are really getting along and bonding well, but with the third person, everything they do is just wrong and dumb, so that’s kind of fun to write, such a specifically comedic dynamic.

NT: What do you want the audience to take away from Asuncion?
JE: Well, I guess if they don’t take this away, it doesn’t matter, but for me, the play and the story was a way to question my own assumptions about the world and biases about culture and race and class, and I feel gratified when people say it made them think about stuff like that, because that’s what’s interesting about it to me, and that’s why I like go to plays, so I can see issues for ideas or scenes raised in an entertaining way.

Reach Katie here.