Today we are speaking with playwright, Lance Ringel (LR .)His new play Flash/Frozen is a fictional story that revolves around an actual event, the plane crash that took the lives of the 1961 United States Figure Skating team. It opens this Thursday, March 10, 2022, at Theater Row located at 410 W. 42nd St., New York, NY. The show will run at 7:00 PM Thursday through Saturday and 3:00 PM Sunday through March 20.
How would you describe your show Flash/Frozen to somebody who doesn't know anything about it?
LR: Flash/Frozen is a drama based on true events about two very different young men, champion athletes, whose lives fatefully and unexpectedly intersect, in an event that forever changed U.S. figure skating.
What age would you recommend your show for?
LR: Although there is much in the story of Flash/Frozen that some younger members of the audience might find interesting, the intensity of the play’s central event might be too strong for those under the age of, say, 16.
How did you come up with the idea to write the play?
LR: I was a kid of about 8 or 9 when the play’s central event happened, and it’s always haunted me. But it seemed much, much too momentous to write about, with too many storylines … until I learned about this particular aspect, and realized it was my way into the larger story.
Have you written other plays?
LR: Yes. In Love with the Arrow Collar Man is also historically based; it’s about J.C. Leyendecker, who was America’s premier illustrator before Norman Rockwell (and indeed Rockwell, who was a protégé of Leyendecker, is a character in the play). And I wrote the book and lyrics to Animal Story, a musical with a score by Chuck Muckle about a group of animals who must come to a decision about how to deal with a mean zookeeper.
Are you working on anything now?
LR: Lately I am thinking about writing a short story, which has never been my genre. But a thoughtful response from a reader of one of my novels has put an idea in my head. We’ll see where that takes me.
What is your favorite part of what you do?
LR: As a playwright specifically, I most enjoy getting to be part of the magic of seeing talented actors and directors bringing my characters to life. As a writer more generally, it’s creating those characters to the point they become quite real to me.
What is the hardest part of what you do?
Starting. Getting started is always the hardest part.
Who are some other playwrights that you really admire?
LR: Hmm. In no particular order, Lillian Hellman, William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Marsha Norman, Tennessee Williams, Ntozake Shange.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to do what you do?
LR: Just write. Don’t spend a lot of time talking about being a writer, just write. If it’s good – and it won’t always be, so I should say when it’s good – you’ll know.
Which did you start writing first books or plays, and do you consider yourself primarily an author or playwright?
LR: I started with novels, but nowadays I definitely think of myself as both a novelist and a playwright.
How did you end up writing plays after primarily writing books?
LR: Having written several novels, I always thought writing plays would be too hard. How do you say what you want to say with just dialogue and stage directions? But then I got an idea for a story that I wanted to tell, and something inside me said, “This is a play, not a book.” The same thing became true for Flash/Frozen. I realized, once I got the idea of how I wanted to tell this particular story, that it was meant to be a play. Because of the pandemic, we had to present it first as a reading online. But now it is onstage, where it was always meant to be.
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Great interview. Thanks for sharing.
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