Meet Wipeout Playwright, Aurora Real de Asua!
We’re excited to share an interview with Aurora Real de Asua, playwright of Wipeout (2024 Rolling World Premiere) and recipient of the 2024 Goldman Prize for New American Plays!
Tell us a little bit about yourself!
I am a surfer, performer, and writer from the Bay Area and the Basque Country. When I was a kid I wanted to be a dog. Then I learned that there was this field - "the theatre" - where people would pay me to be a dog. So here we are. I like my plays funny, honest, and a little bit feral. If I had to compete in the Olympics, I would want to be an ice dancer. Mamma Mia! starring Meryl Streep is a perfect movie and I am willing to go down fighting for this belief. I think that modern headlights are too bright. I prefer the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice to the BBC Colin Firth miniseries (though I recognize that the Colin Firth one is very good). I am enjoying brat summer. I dislike long pants. My favorite color is burnt orange. My favorite beaches are Stinson Beach (California), Sopelana (Spain), and the beaches in the Mamma Mia! movie.
Wipeout at B Street Theatre in Sacramento, CA
For anyone who hasn’t seen or read Wipeout, how would you describe the play?
Wipeout is a surf comedy about the complexities of aging. The play follows three seventy-year-old best friends who reunite to take a surf class from a very, very stoked nineteen year old surf instructor. It takes place off the coast of Santa Cruz, California and is staged entirely on surfboards. It includes: otters, splash fights, personal betrayal, that trio friendship situation where one person is always the odd one out, kelp, paddle lessons, loofahs, grief, weed vapes, Botox, security whistles, jesuits, and, of course, wipeouts.
How did producing this piece through NNPN’s Rolling World Premiere program differ from your experience of producing other new works?
This is actually my first experience having a play produced! So I can't really compare it to anything that's come before. But it's true that the Rolling World Premiere gave me an incredible safety net to take artistic risks. Knowing that future productions were a guarantee allowed me to loosen up and play. I experimented a lot with jokes, structure, and dialogue, knowing that - if something didn't work - I could just take it out for the next production.
Wipeout at Rivendell Theatre Ensemble in Chicago, IL
What did you learn having Wipeout produced at three theaters of varying size and scale during the roll?
Staging the Pacific Ocean is no easy feat! The creativity of the three design teams blew me away. It didn't matter what the space looked like - how small, how dusty, how cavernous. The designers always found a way to transport the audience back to the sea. Rivendell, the smallest stage, used projections (by the extraordinary Andres Fiz) to create a sense of a vast horizon. B-Street, whose large theatre provided a real horizon, put the actors on real surfboards, which made us all feel like we were actually catching waves. And Gloucester crafted a set inspired by those plastic above ground swimming pools that the cool kids in elementary school all had in their backyard, which added a huge jolt of joy to the world of the play. Each design was completely unique. So I guess what I learned is that designers are geniuses.
What surprised you during the process of having a rolling world premiere?
Audiences have very different senses of humor, depending on where they live. There are the universal laughs, of course - who doesn't love a good herpes joke? But the bits about California Highway, which landed so well with the Sacramento audiences, didn't resonate as much with the Gloucester folks. And some of the details about the ocean, so familiar to Gloucester's seaside community, weren't so relevant to the people in Chicago - who were thrilled by the raunchy sex jokes. Each community brought its own perspective to the piece, which opened up the play and characters in ways I hadn't anticipated.
What was your favorite part of the rolling world premiere process?
I learned very quickly that this is a hard play to do. Three older actresses must straddle surfboards (or surfboard-like apparatuses) for ninety minutes, engage in slapstick physical comedy, sustain an imaginative ocean environment, and learn how to surf - all the while performing extremely naturalistic scenes that examine personal mortality by way of gaping silences. I mean, in family dramas, at least you get to sit down on a chair to examine your personal mortality. There are no chairs in the Pacific Ocean (to my knowledge). With so much for the actors to juggle, rehearsals can feel like engineering sessions. Does the wave come from the left or the right? Where is the otter exactly? Do I paddle before or after the big monologue about death? It's easy to feel like everything is going wrong. But there comes a moment - usually after first preview - where the actors realize that the play works. They let go and start to have fun. That's my favorite part. Watching each cast claim the characters for themselves.
Where can we find you on social media or online to keep up with upcoming/future productions?
There are upcoming Wipeout productions this September at Connections Stage and Screen in Bloomington, Indiana, and at the Alleyway Theatre in Buffalo. Studio Theatre in D.C. will mount Wipeout in June 2025. And if you're still in Indiana this September and want more action, Phoenix Theatre is partnering with New Harmony Project's PlayFest Indy to do a workshop and public reading of another play of mine - WET. (Anyone sensing a water theme here?) As for social media, you can either become my Venmo friend and track my social life via my payments, or you can follow me on my abysmal, self-made website - aurorarealdeasua.com. And if anyone is a website designer, please hit me up! Desperately seeking programmers.
Wipeout at Gloucester Stage in Gloucester, MA