Martha Lavey: How long have you known each other? Jessica Thebus: We’ve actually known each other since sophomore year in high school. Martha Lavey: Oh, no, come on… Laura Eason: Actually, no, I think it’s junior high. We didn’t know each other in junior high, but we did go to the same junior high together. ML: I didn’t know that! JT: Then there was a long gap where we didn’t know each other, and then we found each other again in our twenties. ML: What’s the first project that you worked on together artistically? JT: We worked on a piece called They All Fall Down, which was adapted from the Richard Cohan biography of Richard Nickel, a Chicago photographer and an architectural preservation activist famous for photographing Louis Sullivan’s work. We wrote it together, I directed it, Laura at the time was Artistic Director at Lookingglass. And subsequent to that, we’ve done a number of things at Steppenwolf together. LE:Tale of Two Cities, which I adapted and Jessica directed. And then When the Messenger is Hot, another adaptation, of Elizabeth Crane short stories, which Jessica directed as well. ML: Jessica, you’ve also worked with Laura, as an actress. She’s a wonderful actress, she’s part of the original ensemble at Lookingglass and was recently Emily there in Our Town. Laura, did you know that you were a writer or did that aspiration emerge in some way from working as an actor with your ensemble? LE: Coming out of Performance Studies at Northwestern, we were taught to think conceptually, not just creating as a writer as in handing off the text to somebody else, but rather making pieces where the visual life would speak as much as the text. I didn’t know that I wanted to write plays as much as I’ve ended up doing, that’s revealed itself over time. ML: And now you’ve written Sex with Strangers, a play that premiered at Steppenwolf at First Look, last summer. JT: First Look was such a perfect laboratory for being able to work closely, as writer, director, and dramaturg with these actors and take it apart. We put it in a pressure cooker and like, determined what was explosive and dynamic about the relationship between these two characters, starting with Laura’s ideas and her feel for them and where she wanted them to go. We were really able to develop it, so that it felt unusual, dangerous, very passionate. LE: I’ve done a few shows at Steppenwolf and I’ve known so many of the ensemble members for years. My first big gig at Northwestern was understudying Sally Murphy in Earthly Possessions at Steppenwolf. After watching Sally all of these years, to have her in a play of mine at Steppenwolf is just a thrill. ML: This play is very expressive of our season theme of public/private self. Can you talk about what draws you to that? LE: I feel like it’s such an interesting time now. People who are in their early twenties have, for the most part, lived a lot of their life online. They know things about people before they meet them, they Google everybody, there’s so much information they bring that the blank moment that used to happen doesn’t happen so much anymore. Those of us who are not in our early twenties anymore came of age at a time where the internet was not so prominent. The experience of encountering someone totally new to you, without being able to read up about them or find out information about them meant that you could meet them in the moment. That experience is going away. Encountering someone really fresh is going away. We used to be able to choose what we would disclose and when we would disclose it and how we would disclose it. Now, particularly with Facebook, you meet someone for two minutes at a function and you can go online and look at pictures of their children. It’s just incredibly interesting how we’re moving through the world and what that means about how we come to know each other. ML: There’s an art of conversation that’s also obviated by the technology. JT: We can all think of stories within the space of a single day of amazing, powerful, very moving uses of this speed of communication, and the difficult and absurd things you’re exposed to that you never wanted to know. Week by week, day by day, there are both. Like, I never would have found that person and had that interaction, was I not on Facebook . ML: There’s not a trace of me on Facebook. JT: I’ve found myself getting quieter and quieter and quieter… fingers further away from the keys. And how quiet or how loud we’re willing to be is a big part of the show. LE: There’s this public discourse that happens, this, public but also sort of anonymous discourse that can be really damaging! When you read some horrible review about something you really care about, it’s challenging. JT: It’s just writing like writing on a bathroom wall. The anonymous writer can have this impact… and disappear.