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Zoe attended the 49th annual New York Film Festival presentation of Shame at Alice Tully Hall in New York City. Look at how lovely her outfit was! She was so cute alongside her boyfriend, Paul Dano and Rose Kuo.
Public Appearances > 2011 > 49th Annual New York Film Festival – “Shame” (October 07, 2011)
AT the end of a 90-minute conversation Jesse Eisenberg announced that what he really would like to do is write a musical. To which Zoe Kazan responded, “That’s the most impressive thing you’ve said this whole time.” Mr. Eisenberg answered back by listing other comments he had made. “Musical theater totally trumps that,” she retorted.
Ms. Kazan, 28, and Mr. Eisenberg, who will be 28 next month, trade barbs in a way that only people who run in the same circles would. These actors have known each other for years. They are both slightly built New Yorkers known for intelligent performances dramatizing eccentric anxiety. Mr. Eisenberg is more famous because of blockbuster movies like “The Social Network,” but Ms. Kazan has more experience onstage, starring most recently in the revival of “Angels in America.” But they both give the impression that they are younger than they are, of being indie even when acting in Hollywood or on Broadway. Now they have something else in common: They have each written a play that has a debut next month.
Ms. Kazan’s “We Live Here,” a dysfunctional-family drama set before a wedding, opens at Manhattan Theater Club on Oct. 12, the same day that Mr. Eisenberg’s “Asuncion” begins previews at the Cherry Lane Theater. Mr. Eisenberg stars in his comedy, a Rattlestick Playwrights Theater production, as a naïve blogger whose ideals clash with his life experience. On a recent morning they chatted with Jason Zinoman over coffee. These are excerpts from the conversation.
Q. It’s a cliché for actors to say, “I want to direct,” but less often do I hear them say, “I want to write a play.” Why did you do it?
ZOE KAZAN I always wrote. My parents are writers. It just seemed like something people did. I took a writing class in college, liked it, and my first year out of school I couldn’t get a job, so I wrote a play. I never wanted to be a playwright. I just didn’t say no to any of my interests. I don’t have any hobbies.
JESSE EISENBERG People ask me what my hobbies are in interviews, and I always say biking. But all I bike for is to get to rehearsal more quickly. I have no hobbies either.
Zoe Kazan tries not to Google herself. For one thing, she’s not eager to read comments dismissing her show-business career as the result of being the grandchild of Oscar-winning director Elia Kazan: “I feel so separate on a daily basis from my family and whatever else comes with K-A-Z-A-N that I feel disrupted by other people putting attention on it.”
The 27-year-old actor-writer has penned her second play, “We Live Here,” which starts previews this week at New York City Center—Stage I and was commissioned by the Manhattan Theatre Club. It stars Amy Irving as a mother in a secret-plagued family with one daughter getting married and the other threatening the peace by bringing home a guest from their past.
Director Sam Gold says Ms. Kazan was not “precious” about her script but game to rewrite. Ms. Kazan calls such collaboration part of theater tradition, bringing up the grandfather whose shadow she’s generally trying to avoid. “There are amazing examples more highfalutin than my play, like my grandpa with ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,’ ” she says, citing the 1955-56 Broadway production whose script Mr. Kazan and Tennessee Williams reworked together.
Last month, Ms. Kazan was wrapping the filming of her first produced screenplay, “He Loves Me,” in which she co-stars with her boyfriend of four years, Paul Dano. The film is about a novelist with writer’s block who conjures a fantasy girlfriend into existence. The directors, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, made “Little Miss Sunshine,” which featured Mr. Dano.
Ms. Kazan, who in the past year and a half has appeared in Martin McDonagh’s “A Behanding in Spokane” on Broadway and a major Off Broadway revival of “Angels in America,” says she considers herself an actress first. She writes while lying on the guest bed with her computer on her stomach in a pink room in her Brooklyn apartment.
“To me, it’s still like playing Barbies,” she says. “I can go into my room and live in this imaginative world and no one is going to look at it and there’s no audience or camera.” She adds, “It’s a way of having something to put my creative energy in and plot about and have on my side when I go to bed at night and I’m feeling bad about myself.”
Ms. Kazan and her younger sister grew up without a TV at home. The Yale University graduate didn’t go to clubs and spent most of her time reading and studying. Ms. Kazan says she learned fundamentals of storytelling from her parents, both Hollywood screenwriters. People can get the wrong idea about Los Angeles movie families, she says: “My parents are crazy introverts. They sit at home in their pajamas all day long and write.”
Today’s Zoe birthday, she’s turning 28! Happy Birthday! 
Oscar nominee Amy Irving, Mark Blum and Jessica Collins will complete the cast of Manhattan Theatre Club’s world premiere production of We Live Here by Zoe Kazan, joining previously announced cast members Betty Gilpin, Oscar Isaac and Jeremy Shamos. The play will begin previews on September 22 and open on October 12 at New York City Center Stage I, directed by Sam Gold.
We Live Here centers the wedding of Allie Bateman (Collins) and Sandy (Shamos). When Dinah (Gilpin), her precocious younger sister, returns to the home of their parents (Irving and Blum) for the festivities, she brings more than anyone expected: a new boyfriend (Isaac) whose hidden history resurrects passions and painful memories for the whole family. Over one emotionally charged weekend, the Batemans must acknowledge and accept loss to gain hope for regeneration.
An Oscar nominee for Yentl and Golden Globe nominee for Crossing Delancey, Irving has appeared on Broadway in The Coast of Utopia, The Three Sisters, Broken Glass, Amadeus and Heartbreak House. Off-Broadway credits include Road to Mecca, Ghosts, Waters of March and A Safe Harbor for Elizabeth Bishop.
Collins has appeared on the New York stage in Pygmalion and Manic Flight Reaction and starred in the TV series Rubicon and The Nine.
Blum’s Broadway credits include Twelve Angry Men, The Graduate, A Thousand Clowns, Gore Vidal’s The Best Man, Lost in Yonkers, My Thing of Love and The Merchant. Off-Broadway credits include After the Revolution, The Overwhelming, The Waverly Gallery, The Long Christmas Ride Home, The Music Teacher, The Seagull, Mizlansky/Zilinsky, Gus and Al (Obie), It’s Only A Play, Little Footsteps, Key Exchange, Table Settings and Say Goodnight Gracie.
The creative team for We Live Here includes John Lee Beatty (scenic design), David Zinn (costume design), Ben Stanton (lighting design), Ryan Rumery (sound design), and Thomas Schall (fight direction).
Source: broadway.com
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