As we were saying the other day, the Seattle Rep is producing a play next season by playwright (actor, screenwriter) Robert Schenkkan, who lives in Seattle and whom we first met at Victrola. (You know him for authoring the magisterial The Kentucky Cycle, or from his appearance on Star Trek: TNG or in Pump Up the Volume.)

Seattlest: By the Waters of Babylon: it's a newer piece, right? What got you started on a story about a Cuban gardener?

RS: It had its world premiere at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival [2005] under the direction of Bill Rauch, but has been extensively revised for this production. It started out as a two-hander (two-character piece) about a widowed woman in Austin, Texas, and her encounter with the Hispanic man she hires to repair her yard. I don't know why he's Cuban but he was from the beginning and I've learned you have to honor those impulses. The play was about different kinds of exile, about different kinds of alienation that we as citizens feel from our respective governments and from each other.

Seattlest: Tell us about some dramatic part of the writing experience, you know, like when the ghost of Hemingway appeared and gave you pointers when you were blocked.

RS: Sorry, no Hemingway, but I did learn to make a pretty mean mojita. I decided I needed to visit Cuba in order to write this. In those days it was tough to get a visa but one could still go on a Cultural Visa. I tagged along with a group from EMP. Their focus was obviously Cuban music about which I knew very little and wasn't initially especially interested in. But when I traveled through the country, I realized the music was a fantastic way to enter Cuban culture, Cuban life, and Cuban philosophy. The play was infinitely richer for the experience and I'm a complete convert.

Seattlest: Since you're in town, will you be involved in the Rep's staging or will they hand your picture to security with orders to shoot on sight?

RS:This will be full production in the Leo K theatre (a terrific space for this play) and I will be very involved.

Seattlest: We had no idea you were revising this play. What else are you up to that we don't know about?

RS: Film: I just delivered a new film script to 20th Century Fox about the fall of Saigon -- April 1975, when America left Vietnam. A fascinating subject with rather interesting reverberations today. I have a movie at Dreamworks, The Rules, which is out to directors, and another, The Co., at Bristol Bay, also out to talent. TV: My adaptation of The Andromeda Strain for A&E starts shooting in Vancouver in July. I also did four episodes of the new HBO/Tom Hanks/Steven Spielberg mini-series, The Pacific. This will be the most expensive mini-series in TV history. (Not that you'd know that from what I got paid.) Theater: John Doyle (Tony Award-winning director of Sweeney Todd) has announced that he wants to direct Handler as his next stage project.

Seattlest: As a blog, we're home of the rant. Whatcha got for us?

RS:I think we should take the Mayor, the Governor, the Speaker of the House, the City Council -- in short, all those elected local leaders who have shown such abysmal leadership of late -- bury them in a tunnel, and then build a big viaduct on top.