As a child, playwright Paul Hood dreamed of being a film star.
That dream may not have been too farfetched. Hood is an imposing figure at 6-feet-3-inches tall, with piercing eyes, a reassuring voice, and a smile that could tame a road-rager. But don’t think for a minute that this cool guy is going to let his audiences off the hook when they come to see his plays. Sure, he’ll make you laugh, but he’ll also force you to think deeply, ponder life and question your truths.
“What makes me tick are the mysteries of life,” Hood muses. “I feel like, as a writer, if I figured this all out, I would be bored out of my mind. Some of the questions I have about existence fuel me to explore things in my writing such as love, addictions, failures, the plight of dysfunctional families and relationships, the joys and wonders of simple things.”
Hood admits to his love/hate relationship with life—something he struggles with. Fortunately, he’s able to examine that struggle through his creative outlet of choice—play writing—which allows him to “share my thoughts with the universe.”
“It’s an enjoyably cathartic endeavor,” he says.
Local theater-goers have been witness to those endeavors inside venues such as Open Stage of Harrisburg, Gamut Theatre and Hershey Area Playhouse, among others. Hood has had a flurry of staged works produced in and around the ‘Burg as of late, and upcoming this month is “My Electric Life,” which explores the notion of Internet addiction of three completely different individuals.
Hood’s inspiration for “My Electric Life” came about one summer when he realized how much his own online routine—Facebook, dating sites, general surfing—had turned into a habit that wasn’t allowing him to write, to truly live, to fully connect one-on-one with others.
“I wanted to explore the idea with honesty and humor and not sugarcoat anything about three strangers who have to face one another and open up about why it is they isolate themselves from the world,” Hood says. “I wrote it thinking I’d maybe enter it into the Philly Fringe festival or The Capital Fringe in Washington, D.C., but then I realized I could try it out in Harrisburg first because we have a pretty large theater scene open to hearing new work by local playwrights.
Hood is particularly thrilled about the premiere of “My Electric Life” because it will be his first full production in Harrisburg after almost four years of staged readings, where actors on stage have scripts in hand.
While “My Electric Life” was inspired by Hood’s own Internet habits, most of his other plays that deal with social and mental health issues (along with the absurdities of life) are triggered by the things he sees and hears throughout the city. Plays such as “Other Cat,” “Aldous Remembers” (which had its first reading at Midtown Scholar Bookstore) or Hood’s longer works—such as “I, Journeyman” and “Brighton’s Green Street”—incorporate the rhythm and vibe of urban living.
“I couldn’t see any of my plays taking place in the countryside of Pennsylvania,” he says. “The themes I explore feed off the energy of my surroundings, which has always been city life.”
The city lives and breathes in Hood’s pores even though he originally hailed from Birmingham, Ala., then Youngstown, Ohio, and Middletown, Pa., before his mother unexpectedly moved the family to Harrisburg when Hood was 11 years old. As a youngster, Hood was pretty much a “hermit,” painfully shy, insecure and saddled with a severe learning disability. The “city” loomed large, too large, so movies and comic books were his escapes. He’d spend his summer days inside watching movies and took notice of how things “worked”—character motivations, setting, plotting and dialogue.
“I watched movies clearly to invest myself in the lives of people I thought I wanted to be like when I grew up,” he recalls. “Like all kids in the John Hughes films or the young kids in ‘Goonies’ and ‘E.T.,’ I wanted their lives. I grew up in a dysfunctional family so anything on a screen filled with adventure or comedy was craved.”
Hood’s love of the big screen segued to him becoming a respected local movie critic after he answered an online ad for a local entertainment website called Harrisburg Online. Here, he could combine his two loves—writing and film. He began taking old short stories he’d written and converting them into screenplays that eventually morphed into plays.
“The change for me happened after a room filled with hundreds of people howled with laughter, gasped and listened intently to words I had written,” Hood says. “I was hooked. I had found my true voice as a writer, everything beforehand was practice.”
Hood is a member of Playwrights Alliance of Pennsylvania (PAPA), the region’s playwriting group, with whom he’ll be working on a theme-based play, and one of his short plays will be featured at Oyster Mill Playhouse in Camp Hill this summer. He also hopes to raise funds to get a production of “Brighton’s Green Street” on stage somewhere in the city.
This self-described former “hermit,” this shy, insecure, film-obsessed playwright, has risen above it all, giving voice to city life and to us a piece of his mind. All we have to do is batten the hatches, hang on and hope for the best.
“Playwriting gives me a chance to explore ideas or say things I may be afraid to talk about in person,” Hood says. “The stage is my virtual podium for self-expression, a place where my philosophies and questions can come to life in the form of something enlightening to an audience.”
Paul Hood’s “My Electric Life” will be performed March 27 to 29 and April 10 to 12 at the Harrisburg Improv Theatre, 1633 N. 3rd St., Harrisburg. Visit www.hbgimprov.com.
