Katori Hall: ‘P Valley’

The Treatment

KCRW

Arts

4.6 • 639 Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Playwright and showrunner Katori Hall joins Elvis Mitchell this week on ‘The Treatment.’ Hall’s plays include ‘The Mountaintop’ and ‘Hurt Village,’ and her most recent project is the Starz series ‘P Valley,’ which is about people who work at a strip club in the Mississippi Delta. Hall and Mitchell discuss how her work can often be a “backstage into Blackness” where characters can be unapologetically themselves. She takes issue with her plays and series being called melodrama, saying they are a reflection of real Black experience. And Hall explains why her work is like putting “vitamins into Kool-Aid.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.
0:05.0	Welcome to the treatment, the treatment, the home version. I'm Elvis Mitchell.
0:18.0	I'm not sure what to say about my guest except that she is the most game person I've ever had to do this show and the history of doing the show.
0:25.7	But that's neither here nor there.
0:28.1	My guest is the creator of Pea Valley.
0:31.5	She is an Olivier-winning award-winning playwright for her plays that include the Mountaintop.
0:37.3	I'm talking to Katori Hall, whose new show P. Valley is on stars.
0:42.7	Katori, thank you so much you're doing.
0:44.0	I really, I cannot thank you enough.
0:45.9	Oh, it's all good.
0:47.6	I'm happy to be here.
0:48.8	Yay, we're talking.
0:50.1	We kick in.
0:52.1	That's right.
0:52.9	We're doing that thing.
0:53.9	But one of the things I mentioned to you before when we tried to do this was your work as a writer is really about taking us backstage into Black Life.
1:03.2	And I think that's a remarkable sort of mindset for you to put the audience into.
1:08.7	Yeah.
1:09.7	It's like I was telling you, I'm stealing that phrase from you, backstage into blackness.
1:16.8	Yeah.
1:17.6	Whether it is, you know, the backstage at a strip club or if it's with, you know, Dr. King in room 306, I really want to be able to show all audiences,
1:31.6	whether they white, black, whatever.
	...

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