Artist Insight

10 Questions — Jojo Ruf

September 11, 2012 | by Manny Strauss   
  1. First show you saw:
    I think it was probably the three-person A Christmas Carol at Glen Echo when I was four or five. I saw it every single winter for years and years growing up.

  2. First involvement in a theatrical production:
    The Christmas play when I was in kindergarten. I have this really vivid memory of bellowing Jingle Bell Rock, although I’m not quite sure which part I actually played.

  3. Favorite play / musical:
    This is so challenging to answer, and changes constantly. I’m drawn to plays that are lyrical and bizarre and fantastical and stimulating. There’s nothing better than a piece that keeps me up at night, one that continues marinating long after I’ve finished reading or left the theater.

  4. Favorite playwright / composer:
    It is impossible to pick just one. Tennessee Williams, Federico Garcia Lorca, Naomi Wallace, Brian Friel, Sarah Kane, Aditi Brennan Kapil. The list goes on and on.

  5. What you like most about Washington area theatre community:
    How it can feel both small and vast at the same time. There is an immense amount of theater happening on any given night (and an exciting amount of new work!), and yet there is still this intimacy within the community.

  6. Something others are often surprised to find out about you:
    I was originally a math major in college. I actually didn’t intend to do any theater, but within the first four months I was hooked.

  7. Other than your significant other, who would be your dream date (living or dead)?
    Ernest Hemmingway.

  8. If not theatre, then what?
    I think I would probably be a surgeon.

  9. Why do you do what you do?
    New Play Development is exhilarating in this incredibly addictive way. I can’t imagine anything better than being able to engage with both playwrights and Artistic Directors, to work to find a way to say yes to both of them. It’s exhausting and all-encompassing and never ending, but I wake up every morning in love with what I do.

  10. Advice for an 8 year-old smitten by theatre / for a graduating MFA student:
    Check your ego and just be willing to dive in and do anything. No one is above sweeping the floor or folding programs or stacking chairs. And while you should certainly be ambitious and driven and fight for what you want, sometimes the moments of watching and listening from the back can be unexpectedly eye opening.
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