An interview with I’M REPEATING MYSELF writer/creator Chad Kaydo and director Carsen Joenk. In conversation with Ann Marie Dorr, The Brick Interim Producing Artistic Director, 2024-2025.
Ann Marie Dorr
Carsen–Who is Chad?
Carsen Joenk
Oh, my God, that is the hard ball. Who is Chad?
Um, okay… Well, yeah, actually, I’m kind of like…I was feeling like I should maybe think of some sort of like a poetic textual answer, but I’m going to say that Chad is Chad Kaydo who’s living in New York City and is a Hunter grad writing interesting, beautiful plays. And that includes this one, in which there are many more Chads.
And I think that’s as much investigating as I feel like I can do for just the “who is Chad?” on this one?
Chad Kaydo
So boring, so factual.
CJ
Yeah, the facts, I’m going with the facts of what I know, what I know is true, versus all the inside stuff I might feel.
Photo: Maria Baranova
AMD
Okay, so Chad – who is Chad REALLY? Who REALLY is Chad?
CK
I mean, oh, I guess the real answer is, if I knew, I wouldn’t have written this play! But Chad is Alma Cuervo
and Matthew Antoci and Jon Norman Schneider
and Enette Fremont
and Frankie Placidi.
That’s what the play kind of is, that I don’t know that we know who we are sometimes, or we think we do, and that idea can get in the way.
AMD
Yes, especially when you’re a playwright, I think. When you’re like, let me mine the depths and corners of the brain and the soul and try to put something on paper.
CK
Yeah, which perhaps I will never do again, but we’ll see. I mean, never something that feels so blatantly like, yeah, like, you know, beat to beat, life to stage.
AMD
You won’t have a sequel then?
CJ
“I’m Still Repeating Myself,” yeah, “I’m Repeating Myself Again,” yeah.
AMD
Oh, this is a sneaky, fun question I actually thought of in the shower, and then I forgot to write it down. When you repeat yourself, what are the words that you most often feel that you repeat, or sounds, or like syntaxical lexical things that you repeat the most?
CK
I was with my cousin, who’s mentioned in the play, actually, this summer, and she and her daughter kept making fun of me, because—there’s probably a word for them, but someone’s talking, and you go, “mmmmm.” And they kept saying I sounded like Michael Barbaro on The Daily, To me, those sounds are just, saying to someone, I’m listening, I’m interested. And I think it comes from interviewing people on the phone in my past life as a journalist where, like you want don’t want people to stop talking, you want them to know you’re interested and you’re listening. So you go, yeah, mmmm.
CJ
Wow.
Active listening, listening. Yes.
CK
How do you repeat yourself, Carsen?
CJ
I certainly have phrases that I say a lot, and I go through phases of saying certain phrases a lot. I have been saying the word “totally” a lot recently, and then to myself, I’ll have, like, I’ve newly started to investigate some repetitive mantras of like, calming or soothing or getting excited about something. I don’t know if they work yet, but I’m trying to, like, actively repeat things to myself now in a new way, but all of the classic, like, Midwestern active listening phrases, “no worries.” Or like, when people—what’s that when people say “no problem” in sort of different ways, or, “sorry.”
CK
I do “totally,” totally, totally, totally.
CJ
Yes, so much now, and I cannot get myself to stop saying it. I need a little jar.
AMD
You could put a “totally” jar in the rehearsal room?
CJ
Yeah, totally we have an “aunt” jar. Everyone in the Midwest says, aunt like “ant.”
AMD
So what is the hottest, sexiest, horniest part of this play…right now?
CK
I mean, there are many conversations about porn, and some of them, some of them take unexpected swerves, hopefully that starts sending to other places. But yeah, probably the first one.
CJ
I’m gonna say there’s a part in one of those porn sections that talks about what happens if you actually were like into something that would be like, good for your life. And then there’s a scene in the play called “Test.” And I actually think that is, in some ways, like the hottest part, in some way, because it’s so, like, beautiful and so supportive that there’s something that is very hot in a loving way about this section.
CK
I love that. Like that act of care is hot in its own way.
Your mantras reminded me that I decided my one word—like instead of a New Year’s resolution, I picked a word to focus on: care. Not like self care, not like bubble baths, but like truly what are you doing? That are you doing to yourself, that is like actually helping yourself? And then also for others. And I feel like this play is very much about caring for others in some way.
AMD
But the others are all Chad.
CK
Well… there are other people in the play. Everyone who plays me plays several other people as well.
AMD
Yeah, your whole family! And beyond!
Just because Peter wanted to ask it. And now I’m curious, what is the most boring moment in the play right now?
CK
I always think all my plays are boring, but I love that. I mean, that’s my intention. I think the boring moments of life carry everything in them. Like the minutia is what our entire lives are. So, yeah, I used to be afraid of it. Now I’m like, no, that’s just what it is. I don’t truly think this play is boring, but I’m okay with like — there’s an early conversation in the play with Chad and Chad’s mother, and they’re trying to work out the semantics of if someone lives across the street or down the street, and it’s like a page, and Christine Scarfuto, the dramaturg keeps trying to make me trim it. And I was like, no, it’s funny. And it’s real to me that it goes for that long. I trust Christine implicitly, except on that page.
AMD
That’s the baby that can’t die.
CK
I just want that moment to feel as long as it would in real life. And yeah, there are moments that need to move, but that I feel like we can sit in for a minute. But yeah, so far, what’s the most boring? I think that’s a good answer.
CJ
I think that it’s kind of part of experiencing the play, is thinking about what’s real. So I think there is a little bit of “to each their own” in terms of what they’re looking for from a story. And so, yeah, I think different people will have a different experience of what they need or crave from the story. And so it’s like, kind of a weak answer, like, I don’t know, some people might be uninterested in the real, and some people might be incredibly interested in the real. And I think that’s kind of part of the experiment, a little bit too, is, yeah, understanding how the real, even if there are quote, unquote boring parts, affect you as a whole.
So I do think that there’s a good answer.
CK
Totally.
AMD
That’s the name of the sequel, Repeating Myself:
ALL
Totally.
