A road trip isn’t just a way to get from one place to another. It can be an opportunity for sharing meaningful experiences with fellow travelers and learning more about each other. In playwright Jordan Ramirez Puckett’s “A Driving Beat,” opening at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, a five-day drive between Ohio and San Diego becomes an illuminating journey for adoptive mom Diane (Lee Ann Payne), who is white, and her son Mateo (Jon Viktor Corpuz), who is brown, as they set out to find his birth mother. The duo encounters other characters along the way, who are all portrayed by Livia Gomes Demarchi.
TheatreWorks is staging the world premiere production of the show, which opens Nov. 1 in Mountain View. It’s a “rolling” premiere, as a version of this production was first seen at Flint Repertory Theatre this spring. Jeffrey Lo directs TheatreWorks’ production.
Audiences may remember “A Driving Beat” from the company’s 2024 New Works Festival, where the show was seen in development last year.
It was Puckett’s own experiences on a road trip from Southern California to the Midwest that inspired them to write the show.
“A Driving Beat” incorporates beatboxing and spoken-word poetry as Mateo imagines various scenarios meeting his mother and creates rhythmic poems over the static on the car radio as he and Diane drive through some farflung areas. Bay Area musician Carlos Aguirre developed the beats for the show.
A Chicanx writer who now lives in New York City, Puckett grew up in San Jose. They are a graduate of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at Juilliard School and a fellow of WP Theater’s Lab. Their works, which also include “Transitional Love Stories,” “Huelga,” “En Las Sombras” and “To Saints and Stars,” have been produced at companies such asGoodman Theatre, Playwrights Realm, Flint Repertory Theatre, San Diego Repertory Theatre and San Francisco Playhouse. “A Driving Beat” was on the short list for the 2022 Yale Drama Series Prize.
We spoke with Puckett ahead of the play’s opening. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Embarcadero Media: What drew you to playwriting?
Jordan Ramirez Puckett: I went to high school in San Jose. I was definitely a theater kid and was in every single show. They could not get rid of me. I was a terrible actor, but I loved it. I actually had terrible stage fright. It’s funny looking back on it now and being like, “what did I get out of it?” But I think I just really love the community and being a part of creating something.
I love seeing theater. It was so amazing when I went to college. I went to Northwestern, and I got there, and (realized), “oh, there are other jobs in theater besides acting for me.” My first friend that I met at Northwestern wanted to be a stage manager, and so I was like, “yes, stage management, that’s what I’m going to do,” and I did love it, but I also wanted to know more things. So then I got into lighting design, and got really psyched on that. And then my junior year, I took my first playwriting class, and then that’s when I was like, “Oh, I found it. I found the thing I’m supposed to do,” and have not looked back.
Embarcadero Media: What did you like about it?
Puckett: I think storytelling is the most human thing one can do. I just have always loved the art and the craft of storytelling. How much can you say with as few words as possible is something that I get really excited about in theater and in all sorts of narrative storytelling. So I tried to grow and get better at it.
Embarcadero Media: You grew up in the Bay Area. What would you say that has brought to your work?
Puckett: Definitely, I’m influenced by the different communities here. The Bay Area is such a wonderful, diverse place. I’m really interested in the different ways that people are able to move through the world according to their identities. That’s a lot of what “A Driving Beat” is about. I think that that’s something that I saw firsthand, both in the Bay Area and then also in a mixed-race household.
I think a lot of people in the Bay Area have sort of a unique relationship to the tech industry and the push and pull of economic growth that has brought, and also the displacement of people that has brought. So something I’m also really interested in is the intersection between technology and art and how it plays out. I think that’s less present in “A Driving Beat,” but it’s definitely something I explore in my other works.
Embarcadero Media: What inspired you to write “A Driving Beat?”
Puckett: I got my MFA at Ohio University, and so I did a road trip from the Bay Area to Ohio, and we did sort of the southern route. I did the reverse of the road trip that they do in the play, where they go from Ohio to San Diego. I saw a lot of things on that road trip. A lot of the experiences that I had went directly into the play.
Like I said, I’m interested in the ways in which people are able to move through the world according to their identities, and both the stories that we tell about people that we see — we make quick assumptions based on how we perceive people — but I’m also interested in the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, and how that impacts the way we’re able to move through the world. I think there’s no better way to do that than through a road trip. (For) these two very different people, their experiences differ going across the country.
Embarcadero Media: How did spoken word become part of the show?
Puckett: I knew I needed to show the passage of time in some way because I wanted it to be a tight 90-minute show. But it takes place over five days. So how are we going to show the passage of time? And I remember that on the road trip, there would be large swaths where we would try and find something on the radio, and it was just static. So I thought, “wouldn’t it be interesting if this character formed a beat with the static and had these internal monologues that went on top of the beat.” So it started off as a very practical way to show the passage of time, and then has turned into what I think is a really beautiful expression into the mind of our protagonist, Mateo.
Embarcadero Media: What was the process like for creating that element of the show?
Puckett: The words have been written — the spoken-word poems, I’ll call them — have been written since the first draft, and of course, I’ve made changes and edited them, but they’ve been elements since the beginning.
I’ve done a bunch of readings of this play. And every time we’ve done a reading of it, the actors have just read it like a poem without any sound support underneath. Then when we did the New Works Festival at TheatreWorks over the summer, and we were talking about what that reading needed, I (said), “I’ve done a reading of this play many times, and I’ve never actually gotten to hear this done with a beat. It’s this theoretical idea, but I have no idea if it actually works.”
I had just seen Carlos do a talk in the New Works Festival on his project, “The Tell Tale Heart,” and I (asked TheatreWorks): “it would be really great if we could bring Carlos in to work with the actors for just a couple of hours.”
I’m so grateful that TheatreWorks said OK and they brought him in to work with the actors for the New Works Festival for a couple of hours.
Then for the production, they brought Carlos back, and we had more time, obviously, to work with him, and he came in with the actors and gave them a beatboxing 101 lesson, and worked with us to vocalize beats that we’re now using in production. So it’s been a really cool collaborative process.
Embarcadero Media: “A Driving Beat” was part of TheatreWorks’ New Works Festival as well as one in Flint. How has the play evolved over these past few years?
Puckett: I think the heart of it and the structure of it has been the same. The more times you do it in front of the audience, especially with a comedy, you’re able to really hone on “what is the funniest version of this line?” Part of it has just been refining it, but I’m so grateful to the actors, and Jeffrey (Lo) in particular, on this production, because they’re asking really smart questions and questions that even though I’ve worked on this play for a number of years, no one’s brought up. So there’s definitely been changes in terms of clarifying the characters’ intents and their backstories and their motivations that have come out of really good questions. And then also having Carlos work on the beats has opened the play up in a really cool way.
Embarcadero Media: What do you hope people take away from seeing the show?
Puckett: My biggest thing with all of my plays, but I think with this one in particular, is I would love for people to walk out of this play and go, “Oh, I really want to call that person in my life who has meant a lot to me, or that person in my life who helped raise me, who maybe I haven’t like talked to in a minute. And I just want to call them and say, ‘I love you. I’m thinking of you. I just saw a show that made me think of you.'”
Embarcadero Media: What’s your favorite road trip memory?
Puckett: I’m just gonna go first thought, best thought, because I feel like I could think on this for hours. I have this vivid memory: My grandparents lived in Redding, California, so we used to do the drive up to Redding all the time. I have this really vivid memory of being in the car and eating In-N-Out and forcing my aunt to listen to “Phantom of the Opera” and singing “Phantom of the Opera” at the top of my lungs while she was driving. So I’m gonna go with that.
“A Driving Beat” opens Nov. 1 and runs through Nov. 23 at The Mountain View Center for Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View; $49-$79; theatreworks.org.
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