We were lucky to catch up with Hank Kimmel! recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Hank , thanks for joining us today. The first dollar you earn is always exciting – it’s like the start of a new chapter and so we’d love to hear about the first time you sold or generated revenue from your creative work?
After college, I worked as a writer at an Off-Off Broadway theatre company in New York City that produced cabarets of short skits. They were often written on Tuesday and then performed on Saturday. For our first show called Slices, the Producer/Director asked me to be the M.C. She knew that in college I did some stand-up comedy (albeit not that well) and thought I’d be a natural even though I was strongly hesitant. Wearing a referee’s shirt, I approached center stage with no idea what I was going to say to this crowd of strangers. Then I saw something that relaxed me (and the audience) totally. This is what I recall saying: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m not oriented this way so you’ll have to excuse me when I say that in the front row, I’m looking at someone who’s the most handsome guy I’ve ever seen in my life. Sir, would you mind standing and facing the audience and show them what I mean.” The man stands up and as soon as everyone sees that he looks exactly like me, they start howling. I relaxed and they relaxed, and the rest was smooth sailing. I earned my first professional payment, and I would’ve framed the 10-dollar bill except I needed it to help with subway back home.
Hank , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I am a playwright / dramaturg / producer / mediator / tennis pro. People think I’m joking when I say that my profession is being a playwright and my hobby is being a lawyer. Along with founding a theatre company in Atlanta (Working Title Playwrights) and being the immediate past president (and current board member) for the Alliance for Jewish Theatre, I have a full-time mediation practice. In other words, I help resolve conflicts as a mediator in Superior Court during the day, and, as a playwright, I try to get them resolved in my imagination at night. In order to sustain myself as a playwright, I’ve gotten my plays produced in a variety of settings: restaurants, legal conferences, business meetings, fundraising events, parties, a neighbor’s garage, and, yes, traditional theatres. I find that the creativity needed to write plays extends to finding the time and ways to do it. My mantra is a quote attributed to Jonathan Winters: “If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to it.” As a creative type, I find myself doing a lot of swimming – trying to increase the pool of opportunities for all playwrights. As a mediator, I consider myself to be an active listener and a willing collaborator, and that translates to my creative life as well. In general, I write about former athletes (I used to be a tennis pro), distressed lawyers, overwhelmed parents and religious strays. In my plays, love is found accidentally but truly, and walls come tumbling down.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
In general, I try to live my life so that today is better for us than yesterday – to do what’s necessary to ensure that tomorrow will be better than today. I see great value in giving and creating joy. As an artist, I’d like to consider myself perceptive, playful, and persistent. Following Julia Cameron’s credo, I write at least three pages every day (for more than three years and counting), and as one challenge, I wrote 366 six-word plays (one a day) for a span of a year. I try to make sure that I devote between 30-40 hours a week to creative pursuits. This may not seem like a lot, but balanced against having a full-time day job – and an obsession with tennis (I play more than 300 times a year), I consider this to be a reasonably attainable and productive goal.
Have you ever had to pivot?
In order to pursue a career as a playwright, I’ve worked as the following: caterer, political canvasser, lawyer, mediator, tennis pro, property manager. Once I got married and had children, I thought I needed to adopt a more mainstream lifestyle. I moved to Atlanta to attend law school. What I thought would be the end of my creative career was the start. In law school, I was able to get productions of several plays based on famous law cases (plus get academic credit from a theatre-oriented law professor!). After law school, I worked as the executive director and staff attorney for Georgia Lawyers to the Arts, where I was able to make many notable contacts within the theatre community. Eventually, I became a full-time mediator, which may not be the most lucrative way to practice law, but is another form of story-telling that gives me the flexibility, inspiration, discipline, and, yes, income needed to create theatre on a daily basis.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.hankkimmel.com
- Facebook: www.facebook.com (Hank Kimmel)
- Linkedin: Henry W. Kimmel, Esq., Mediation services
- Other: https://newplayexchange.org/
users/2311/hank-kimmel
Image Credits
All images by Barbara Kimmel With the exception: Hank with Braves cap (Georgia Kimmel) Cartoon image by David Pham.