Solo Fest 2025 Spotlight: Steve Harper’s (SNOW (BLACK MAN/WHITE OUT CONDITIONS)
Join us for PlayGround’s eighth annual Solo Performance Festival, a curation of the best in California solo performance! The festival runs until February 9, 2025 (Fri-Sun), presented live on our stage and also simulcast online. More…
Today we’re spotlighting Steve Harper in SNOW (Black man / White out Conditions)
(1/31 at 7pm, 2/1 at 4pm, & 2/2 at 1pm). During a mid-pandemic drive from Reno to L.A., Steve is just trying to make it home (from his husband’s house in Nevada) when a freak snow storm turns the trip into a near-death experience. The journey is harrowing, absurd, thought-provoking and funny, touching on issues of race, loss, grief, death, and loneliness. Snow: Black man. White out Conditions reveals sharp truths about modern life, mortality, faith and what it means to survive.
Hear from the playwright:
What was the seed of this play? What inspired you to write it?
COVID changed everything. The world felt shut down and everyone was isolating. I didn’t want to get on a plane or be near people. My husband and I collapsed our long distance relationship into one household. It was delightful, cozy and fun. And necessitated some marathon car rides from our separate homes in two different states. On one of those trips, a freak snowstorm appeared – and brought me close to death. I started questioning everything about life and its meaning. I knew I needed to write about it.
Why is a solo show the ideal way to tell this story?
This solo trip became an existential crisis. It seems ideal to retell it in a form that can mirror the isolation while also (paradoxically) having a room full of people share in the journey. So much of what happened took place in my head (and in my car) – and there’s something about those facts that resonate with this style of theater.
What are your artistic influences for this show?
I’d love to say something grand about a solo artist who told me to go forth and shine. It’d be fun to drop some names like Tommy Derrah, Lisa Kron, and D’Lo – and in fact, I have met them and learned from them and they blessed me in their way as have many others. But I’ve gotten as much from friends and strangers who’ve shared life secrets, homeless people who told me a truth or family members who let me in on the joyful, painful, strange and funny things they’ve witnessed in their time on earth. My intent is to lay down a little truth, as an offering, to say what I think I heard and felt and feared in the snow filled silence of that trip – to share the panic and relief. Here’s what I remember. I hope it’s useful.
What surprised you during the creation of this piece?
Stepping into SNOW has been a welcome surprise. I fell in love with theater because of the community of it – working with other actors on stage. I didn’t expect to do this kind of piece and it has emerged – insistent, a story that wants to be told. I originally wrote it in 15 minute writing sprints and when it was done, it announced itself to me and asked to be embodied. I tried to ignore it, but it kept showing up. Here I am, answering the call and being welcomed into this new experience. Happy to share it with you.
Is there anything audiences should know about you or your piece before they attend? And/or is there anything else you want to share about your piece?
Wear your seat belt. Dress warmly. Have a scraper handy. Maybe snow tires or chains. Life is short. Stay awake. Keep driving.
Steve Harper (SNOW (BLACK MAN/WHITE OUT CONDITIONS) is a playwright and actor. Plays: co-writing Black Lives/Blue Lives (The Theater Project, NJ), Urban Rabbit Chronicles (Georgia Southern University), Princeton Theory, and Almost. TV: Tracker, God Friended Me, and American Crime. Acting: Guthrie, CATF, Cincinnati Playhouse. Education: Yale, A.R.T. Institute at Harvard and Juilliard playwriting program.