Today we’d like to introduce you to William Hector.
Hi William, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
My story began Christmas 1992 at Jackson Memorial Hospital, and Miami has continued to guide me ever since. I don’t think I would be a writer had I been born elsewhere, both because of Miami’s institutions that helped me along my path, from elementary school summers at the Coconut Playhouse’s theater camp to beginning my journey as a professional writer in the Miami-Dade Playwright Development Program. And because of Miami’s strange and eccentric nature.
There is no better source of creative inspiration than opening the Miami Herald and seeing what comical, sordid, or outright bizarre saga is unfolding today and how many reptiles are involved. I strive to write stories with drama, suspense, and intrigue but that are also fundamentally funny, and I learned that from Miami. We’re a city where pro- and anti-peacock groups are a serious dividing line and where phrases like “my sister’s former debate’s coach sister’s dog” are normal prefaces to anecdotes. As I approach the premiere of my first solo full-scale production, Miami continues to guide. My play, G7: 2070, was awarded a Knight Foundation New Work Miami grant, without which this production would not be possible. And the story and world of the play are deeply indebted as well to the inspiration Miami offers. As world leaders from fifty years in the future meet to decide the fate of the Earth, where else would they meet other than our city, living on the cutting edge of climate change? And in crafting a group of eccentric leaders, rife with rivalries, jealousies, promise and peril, Miami and its wealth of personalities is the best inspiration any writer could hope for.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Rarely is any road smooth, especially when it comes to Miami potholes. But it’s hard to look back on my difficulties as struggles when I’ve been able to have the support of so many amazing teachers, friends, and colleagues. I think the natural impulse for some writers, including myself, is to want nothing more than to share their work with the world as soon as it’s done, and so I’m immensely grateful for the many patient friends willing to read my rough drafts, oftentimes while I stare at them from across a pizzeria table. This proved more challenging with my current play G7, as it was written during the COVID pandemic. The premise for the show is a large-scale immersive experience, and fully realizing it is a collaborative exercise with actors, director and with the audience themselves. So a monastic year of solo writing involved a lot of imagining of how people will interact and respond when they finally could all come back for a shared experience.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
My current project is G7: 2070 which will be premiering in 2022! It’s an immersive theatrical summit, set fifty years in the future, where audience members are invited to become delegates and join the dignitaries of the seven most powerful nations –The US, China, The European Papal Federation, Ethiopia, Uruguay, Russia, and Disney—as they gather in a post-sea level rise Miami to decide the fate of the world. I’ve been working with director Victoria Collado in developing the play with the support of a Knight Foundation New Work Miami grant.
In staging readings of previous plays, I’ve often been able to make use of unconventional spaces: locations like art galleries, architectural offices, and a middle school library. These non-traditional spaces open new possibilities for storytelling and for the relationship between audience and actors. I hope to take these ideas to a new level of interactivity with G7. Everyone experiences a book, play or movie in their own unique way. With immersive theater you can lean into that diversity and give audience members performances that change from night to night depending on their actions as they weave along intersecting paths. For example, a group that experiences the US track of G7 will have a completely different perspective to discuss with friends that were on the Disney track.
What makes you happy?
There’s nothing I love more than getting to talk about a show, play, book or other forms of story with someone else and comparing our reactions to that world and its characters. What stands out to someone –their favorite character, the scenes they remember most, their expectations and surprises— says so much about that person, and I feel like there’s no better way to understand someone than to discuss stories with them. As such, I’m often the friend very insistently recommending things for people to read, watch and play, sometimes perhaps a bit too zealously…
Contact Info:
- Email: wjhector@gmail.com
- Website: https://www.williamhector.me/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lastwillandtestement/
Image Credits
Philip Bonnery – Poster design for Monster With 21 Faces Christina Pettersson – Artwork featured in Draco Performance picture Mariella Tzakis – William Hector photo in suit
