A Horrifically Funny Interview With Playwright Riley Elton McCarthy

Playwright Riley Elton McCarthy (they/he) has been called "the most original voice in horror since Mike Flanagan" (Rory Ford, The Scotsman). Their new queer horror play, "I'm Going to Eat You Alive!," is getting its world premiere at Culture Club Lab LIC October 3-27.

This quirky tale of a rather unusual road trip across America promises blood, guts, vomit, cannibalism, the ingestion of rocks, bugs, and tree bark, a dream ballet scene, 400 pounds of sand on stage and a trans lead. There's even a splash zone where you can get a bit too close to the goings on for most people – though there's always some that love to experience the spewing of the blood and guts.

The prolific young playwright is a two-time semifinalist at the Eugene O'Neill National Playwriting Conference for "Sharon and Melina" and "I'm Going to Eat You Alive!" and received extremely favorable reviews for "IVORIES" at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Also in 2023, another of their works "The Lesbian Play," had a successful run at The Triad Theater in New York City. They were a 2021 playwriting resident at the International World Pride Festival in Copenhagen.

Riley is currently pursuing an MFA degree in musical theater at NYU and is working on some big deals that they can't yet talk about. But they were very happy to speak with EDGE about all things "Bugs," which is their nickname for "I'm Going to Eat You Alive!"

EDGE: I have to tell you, when I read the intro in the press kit for "I'm Going to Eat You Alive!" my head was spinning. What's your two-sentence elevator pitch for this play?

Riley: A pica-afflicted geologist collecting rocks across national landmarks in America has his van life road trip interrupted when his ex is released on parole. [Editor's not: Pica is a condition in which people compulsively swallow inedible objects.]

EDGE: There's a lot going on there.

Riley: It's a memory play about the relationship between this van life person, his ex, a pathological arsonist on parole, and his younger sibling, who is still coping with the grief of their mother's passing 10 years ago. They have this shared experience of being there when she passed. The play jumps through the hurdles of the relationships while coinciding with various stops at national landmarks like Mount Rushmore and Death Valley. You might think of it as a road trip, but he's really just trying to collect rocks because he wants to eat them. He has an addiction.

While Roach, the protagonist, is filming a documentary about rocks across America – a "rockumentary," if you will – there's a level of living off the grid and off the internet that is explored in this play that is both scary and terrifying. It's a weirdly emotional play through all of its horror and laughs, and there's a deeply personal relationship between siblings that is really gutting.

EDGE: And it's funny?

Riley: Extremely. There's some physical comedy with these rocks. I would say my writing style is a clash of tragic comedy and horror. I find horror to be circumstantially hilarious. The very concept of horror is derivative of camp, and also of the human experience. It's such an experimental genre that can take us in many places.

"I'm Going to Eat You Alive!" is a very original piece of horror rooted in van life culture. Have you seen videos of people living in vans? I think it's absurd. This play came to me in a dream, and has taken me on the road trip of a lifetime. It came out of nowhere. I love this play. It's the most unique piece in my portfolio. I would basically describe it as tragicomic horror.

EDGE: You traveled across America in an RV.

Riley: I feel like I'm one of the last generations of kids that played outside, and I hold on to that so much because I was a road trip kid. My mother is Danish and my father is an Army soldier, still active duty almost 30 years now. I lived in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas as a kid for quite some time, and the bulk of this play takes place around Leavenworth. It's where the characters grew up. It is heavily implied that the characters are Army kids. And when I lived there, my father bought an RV because he had just been promoted. It was his American dream to have his house, his wife, his kids, and his RV. He took us all across America. I feel really privileged in the regard that I have seen the beauty of America's wilderness. The Badlands lives rent-free in my brain; I am a direct descendant of Wild Bill Hickok.

EDGE: Whoa, I didn't see that one coming.

Riley: [Laughs] Sorry, loaded, loaded. Bomb drop, yeah. I am a direct great-grandchild of Wild Bill Hickok and America. That spirit lives in me. I feel most myself when I'm out in the woods, even though I'm very pale. I've got the Scandinavian in me. My mother, being from Copenhagen, really lives with me. But I had a weird mixed blend of my immigrant roots and my American folk, the Americana roots that really inspired me when writing this play.

The experience of being a transplant everywhere you go but wanting to belong with the world that we live in, even if that's not in society, is something I think about a lot. These characters live on the fringes and the edges, and are rejects. We have a queer character who's been to prison and is in the Fort Leavenworth State Penitentiary for murder. There's another queer character who has never left their childhood hometown in Kansas, and the politics of Kansas have not evolved in years, you know. There's also Roach, a free spirit living off the land who is only eating rocks. That's not healthy.

By the way, I'm also a direct descendant of Ulysses S Grant, so I have two very weird Americana celebrity relatives. [Laughs] I guess I'm a nepotism kid.

EDGE: Your portfolio of work has a lot of horror in it, and a very diverse spectrum of characters.

Riley: I'm a trans person and I'm a trans playwright, but I write very specific people. I don't write for just trans people. I write about the unique experience of human beings. So when I write a trans character like Roach, our leading character, their experience as a trans person is very specific to what they're going through over the course of the play. Roach is dealing with gender dysphoria through his rejection of femininity in nature. He's living in a van, experiencing national landmarks alone in the woods. There's a lot you can hide when you're alone in the woods, but also what you can't reject within yourself. The isolation brings out the best and the worst in Roach. People really are endeared to this journey when they see it.

EDGE: Is there trans representation in the cast?

Riley: There are two trans people in the company, and two implicitly non-binary characters. The leading character was born male, non-binary, and his sibling was born female, non-binary. There's a dynamic within their transness that comes from the gender of their birth and the dynamic in their family that caused them to take two different lives as trans people. It's a subtextual exploration within the play that I found really interesting.

As a trans person, I'm constantly aware of the gender-based dynamics that come from the gender we're born in that become microcosms of queerness that we experience differently. I do think transness is an umbrella, but it's also micro-specific in that every trans person's relationship with their body, and their gender is different. I'm not trying to tell a story that is an umbrella of the trans experience, but how these two people feel about their gender. There's something that's really specific to the play that speaks to all people when they see it. I've had audience members who are trans say, "That character is trans," and I say, "Yes, yes." And that's been really wonderful.

But there are things other than transgender representation to pull from this, like loving someone carnally, loving someone with the raw emotions of a 20-year-old getting their Ph.D. in geology or just trying to figure out who they are. There's something everyone can identify with that is really visceral in this play. I encourage anybody of any age to come see. I don't want to be the playwright who has a specific audience that's a niche.

EDGE: Tell me about the splash zone.

Riley: You're just gonna have to come find out. Wear a raincoat. In the last production, some blood splattered on an audience member. So this time, because there is blood, guts, and gore, we have deemed the front row a splash zone. If you would like to potentially be splashed with blood for the fun of it, you can sit in the front row for $10. It's washable blood, I promise you. I've never done a show where the blood didn't wash out.

EDGE: Is it hard to watch your audience watching your play?

Riley: I will never forget being at Edinburgh Fringe with my play "IVORIES." We had a press day for critics, and there were only seven old white men sitting in the front row. Not a single one of those old men laughed throughout the whole show. My plays are circumstantially hilarious, and it all comes from very human humor. I remember us working so hard for the laughs, and we didn't get any. After the show, we went right to the bar across the street and threw back whiskey shots. The next day, we woke up to glowing reviews. One of the critics from The Scotsman, which is Scotland's big newspaper, reached out to me on Twitter and said my writing was his favorite of the fringe. He also said a show that's 100 minutes long at the Fringe is a risk, but every minute was justified; he was riveted.

EDGE: You're a prolific playwright with productions going up in London and New York at the same time. And now you're in an MFA program in musical theater at NYU. How did you make the jump to musical theater?

Riley: I don't think it was a jump at all. I went to Marymount to get my BFA musical theater, and I eventually realized that wasn't for me. I didn't want the life of a triple threat on Broadway. I got my equity card at 16 doing regional theater in North Carolina. My first big gig was understudying Jeremy Jordan's cousin in "Carousel." I love musical theater, quite frankly, but I also hate it. I'm so multidisciplinary. As a writer, I write screenplays. I've sold a picture deal.

EDGE: Can I mention that?

Riley: You can mention that I have a picture deal, but I can't say more. I write screenplays, I write film, and I write television. I don't want to be limited to one thing. All the great dramatists are doing more than one thing. I'm a performer, I'm a director, I'm a playwright. That is my passion. I love telling stories on the stage, but when I was doing a year of my master's in playwriting at another school where I felt very lonely, I found out through my other transgender friends that the NYU musical theater program needed some extra people. I kind of slid my way into this program because I wanted to be in a collaborative environment where I would learn more from other people with different experiences. I'm a military child. It's in my nature. I have to admit I tear up every single time I pass by the NYU flag because it was my dream school as a kid, and I had given up the dream. Going to NYU feels like healing a little part of little Riley. I know that's cheesy, but I'm very grateful.

"I'm Going to Eat You Alive!" runs through October 27 at the Culture Lab LIC, 5-25 46th Avenue, Long Island City, NY.