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<\/p>\nTierney Finster interviews Maya Martinez about her debut book, \u201cTheatrics: Collected Theatrical Writings.\u201d<\/p>\n
Theatrics: Collected Theatrical Writings by Maya Martinez. Wonder, 2025. <\/p>\n
THE BEST PRAYERS are not affirmations. Affirmations promote positive thinking: you say something as if it is true, hoping that it will become so. Affirmations ignore reality in an attempt to shape it. They often require you to bypass your pain and override your hardship in hopes of manifesting something different. The best prayers\u2014or, at least, my favorite prayers\u2014include that pain. They acknowledge the suffering, the fear, the sickness, the terror, and the endless void of unknowing that brings most humans into communion with the divine in the first place. Affirmations can be escapism. Prayers require presence. These are the kinds of prayers Maya Martinez writes.<\/p>\n
Theatrics: Collected Theatrical Writings by Maya Martinez is a gathering of poems that feel like plays and plays that feel like poems\u2014but all of them feel like prayers to me. Martinez, a poet and performer, stares down existential despair with unmistakable soulfulness. Crashing your car, falling into sinkholes, committing manslaughter, and surviving capitalism are just a few of the problems she explores in these pieces. When I finish one poem, I return to the start and read it again. I wake up the next morning and read it a third time, and then I send it to a friend without comment or context. She writes back, \u201cI want to read it two more times.\u201d Writing like this begs for repetition. Each moment with Theatrics sends the reader plummeting deeper into her own body, his own consciousness.<\/p>\n
\u00a4<\/p>\n
TIERNEY FINSTER: Are you performing for yourself the whole time you\u2019re writing and editing?<\/p>\n
MAYA MARTINEZ: In a way, I guess I am. You know when you\u2019re writing something, and you want to describe a room, and you see the room in your mind? And you try to write down every detail? I feel like when I was writing these pieces, I was seeing certain people. I was seeing characters and settings and letting myself inhabit them. Sometimes, the pieces come from a screaming emotional truth inside me. But as I write, I\u2019m aware of how I would say something, like what I would want to do with my mouth during a certain part. I have a sense of the narrative arc and the performance arc, what emotional notes I want the piece as a whole to hit. Ultimately, I want each piece to break people open and give them something they can take home with them.<\/p>\n
You mention starting with a \u201cscreaming emotional truth.\u201d The pieces in the book feel like they\u2019re imparting wisdom. Is that something you set out to do? Are you writing to teach or illuminate certain concepts?<\/p>\n
Usually, I start because I\u2019m feeling burdened by something. Or there\u2019s something I can\u2019t figure out. Maybe that\u2019s my responsibility to the world around me within a dying world. Or, it\u2019s like, the relationship I have with money in this insane capitalist society. Or relationships with friends. For example, I wrote \u201cI Lived How I Died\u201d as the first piece I was going to perform live at a reading post-COVID.<\/p>\n
From there, I usually start with a cheeky character. I just love a cheeky character. I\u2019m into being a trickster, being a jester. I think one of the best ways to get someone to learn or care about something is by making them laugh. Being playful is a really nice way to help people engage with something new. Playing makes people feel safe. So a cheeky character is the other starting point. This rich gay guy who is stuck in jail in Ibiza. This party girl on Halloween. This housewife who\u2019s telling you about her ego death.<\/p>\n
The cheeky character gives people someone to be on the ride with, and then from there it\u2019s a lot of personal stuff. Like, what does it mean to have humility? What does it mean to be sorry for something? What does personal responsibility mean? What does it mean for your friend to not believe you? Or try to believe you? What does it mean to go through a friend breakup?<\/p>\n
With the book out now, how do you feel about the potential for other people to perform these pieces?<\/p>\n
I feel really excited. When I was discussing what things could look like with Metalabel and Wonder Press, I was clear about this being a book of plays and monologues, and about wanting people to perform them. I think it would be selfish to be like, \u201cOnly I can perform them.\u201d There\u2019s something really nice about seeing what else can be revealed when other people step into your work. I believe more can always be revealed. Anytime I do a show, I ask other people to direct me. Even though I wrote this work and have an idea what it can be like, I just know that other people will see things in the work that I could never see myself. I\u2019m really excited to see other people perform it.<\/p>\n
On July 16, I\u2019m having five people tag-team \u201cHole Play\u201d for a reading at Dear Friend Books, so they\u2019ll each read five minutes of it. Then this writer in London is planning to perform \u201cThe Play\u201d with their best friend. It\u2019s nice that something can have a life again and again.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re about to take this book on tour. Why do you consider bringing your work on the road so important to your writing practice?<\/p>\n
I love a reading. I even love when a reading is bad. I don\u2019t know how to explain it, but there\u2019s just so much beauty in the unexpected. There\u2019s beauty in witnessing someone trying to figure something out. I\u2019m doing a book tour this summer, and I\u2019ve done cross-country poetry tours in the past. When I lived in Baltimore, I performed up and down the coast a lot, down into Florida, where I\u2019m from. A lot of the first performance art I ever saw was just like, in someone\u2019s basement in Tallahassee. It blew my mind that you could just do something right there. You could experiment as much as you wanted in that kind of space. I remember going to shows in Tallahassee and feeling like, \u201cI didn\u2019t even know we were allowed to do that.\u201d Going out and seeing shows and performances is such a good way to learn to give yourself permission.<\/p>\n
In 2018, I did a two-month poetry tour around the United States and up into Canada. In August, I\u2019ll do the East Coast for two weeks, and then fly to the West Coast and drive the West Coast and Southwest loop for another two weeks. I\u2019m already thinking about next year, maybe going to New Orleans and hitting the middle of the country. We live in a country with so many pockets of people who want to commune and do things. There are so many cities and places that get forgotten, and there are so many scenes that are still revealing themselves.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m excited to perform this work in new places. I may have performed the pieces in the book before, but I\u2019ve never done them in Gainesville, Florida. Never in Durham, North Carolina. I get to throw it all out there, be balls to the wall, and see how it comes out differently each time. Getting to do your work every night is such a great way to see where it can go next. It\u2019s a way of reaching new ideas and getting to the next piece of work I\u2019m supposed to make. I\u2019m also just addicted to performing. At my book launch, I feel like I scared myself. I shocked myself, because I accessed a place I didn\u2019t even know I could go. I didn\u2019t think I could push my performance that far.<\/p>\n
You list Molly Shannon, Ryan Trecartin, and Cookie Mueller as the inspirations behind this collection. Will you tell me more about the influence each of those artists has on you?<\/p>\n
Molly Shannon, okay. I love her character Mary Katherine Gallagher, this awkward girl who gets nervous and smells her armpits. I love the insane body comedy of her throwing herself around. Then when my grandma died, I found her memoir [Hello, Molly!] and listened to it as an audiobook. Molly Shannon\u2019s life is a lifelong process of grief. I\u2019m still learning how to grieve, and like most people, I have a weird relationship to death, because nobody teaches us how to grieve. But her book taught me how to grieve. I was living in Philly for three weeks, for no reason, and listening to her audiobook every day. I\u2019ve listened to it multiple times since.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m also just drawn to her desire to create characters from people in her real life, like her dad, and to make stuff out of the crazy situations she\u2019s experienced. Like being a parent to her own dad. I love the complicated, beautifully tragic relationships she\u2019s had and what she\u2019s made out of them. I felt every part of that. I\u2019ve created a lot of characters from a place of looking at my parents and trying to make sense of everything that\u2019s happened between us. I admire how she\u2019s never making fun of anyone. There\u2019s a real heart to it all. And that\u2019s something I try to do with everything I make.<\/p>\n
Ryan Trecartin, I love how his work breaks down language. You know, \u201cI fell down a hillllllllllllllllllll\u201d [from Trecartin\u2019s 2004 film A Family Finds Entertainment]. Language is a toy and Ryan Trecartin plays with it like Legos.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s something so beautiful about how Trecartin writes scripts like that, but also in how he makes sculptures and is building a water park. I am someone who\u2019s like, a poem is a sculpture and a sculpture is a photograph and a photograph is a poem and a performance is a sculpture. I think it\u2019s all connected. Ryan Trecartin is a guiding light for me in that way.<\/p>\n
Cookie Mueller\u2014she was living her life! Every time I want to lean into the serendipity of life and the experience ahead of me, every time I want to let go of rigidity, I think of her. She goes to Italy and stays there for three years, you know what I mean? She\u2019s just so open\u2014body, mind and soul. One would be so lucky to live even just a quarter of her life. She\u2019s so open to how other people live their lives, and really embodies that sense of there not being a right or wrong way to live a life. She\u2019s open to playing. The way she lived her life is the way I want to live mine.<\/p>\n
The final piece in Theatrics is \u201cPrayer for Money.\u201d But other pieces feel like prayers too. Your characters have this signature sense of yearning, but many of them are alone with their desires and sense of uncertainty. They\u2019re expressing a lot to nobody, or everybody, in a way that reminds me of how people talk to God or the divine. Do you see your work that way?<\/p>\n
When I write, I do feel like I am talking to God. Maybe I wasn\u2019t conscious of that before, but I am now. I think a lot of my writing is a prayer\u2014not always praying to God, but just praying for others. Praying for understanding. I feel like \u201cVehicular Manslaughter in Ibiza\u201d is praying for an understanding of what humility could mean. \u201cI Lived How I Died\u201d is about praying for others because we are all connected, through many things, but also because we\u2019re workers. I feel like \u201cHole Play\u201d could be a prayer for the earth and for understanding what our responsibility to each other and the earth is \u2026 and trying to understand ourselves and our friends.<\/p>\n
I pray every day. It\u2019s very easy for me to get caught in my mind. I need to stop and make conscious contact with the God of my understanding. I\u2019ll just say the serenity prayer a lot, right when I wake up and right when I go to sleep, just to quiet my mind. I need that level of spirituality in my life right now in order to feel really free and connected to something greater than myself.<\/p>\n
If you brought all of the characters from Theatrics together to form the cast of a reality show, what kind of show would it be?<\/p>\n
I love reality TV. I work at a restaurant right now, and I love it. It\u2019s always so exciting there. We have work drama. There are so many different personalities trying to work together, and the stakes feel so high when you\u2019re in there. Then you leave and they\u2019re not. I love romanticizing working at a restaurant. It\u2019s so fun. I would want to work with Girl from \u201cHole Play\u201d and Pig and Lamb from \u201cThe Play\u201d and the gay guy that\u2019s stuck in Ibiza [from \u201cVehicular Manslaughter in Ibiza\u201d] and the girl crashing her car while \u201cTomorrow\u201d plays [from \u201cStage Directions for a Car Crash\u201d]. So I have to say something like Vanderpump Rules or Southern Hospitality.<\/p>\n
If Theatrics were a fragrance, what would it smell like?<\/p>\n
Ocean and cigarettes. Something citrusy too. I was at the grocery store yesterday, and they didn\u2019t have passion fruit anymore, but I could still smell them. I was tweaking because the bins still smelled like passion fruit, but there weren\u2019t any. It\u2019s such a beautiful smell.<\/p>\n
LARB Contributor<\/p>\n
Tierney Finster is a writer, editor, and artist from Los Angeles. You can follow her here.<\/a><\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Copy link to articleLARB Staff Recommendations<\/p>\n Helena Aeberli looks for rizz in Adam Aleksic\u2019s \u201cAlgospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language.\u201d<\/p>\n Helena Aeberli<\/a>Jul 20<\/p>\n Ilana Masad interviews Emma Copley Eisenberg about her first novel, \u201cHousemates.\u201d<\/p>\n