Growing up one of my favorite babysitters was Danny Perla because, at that time, he was also a magician. He was always teaching my brother and I magic tricks.

I believe that is one of the reasons I always enjoy performances that incorporate magic, illusion or mind games.

When I received the press release for Carl Holder's upcoming show, Out of Order, the first element that grabbed my attention was the parlor game aspect, but what really drew me in, was that after 20 years of being a playwright, at 40 years-old, Carl stopped writing plays.

In this interview, Carl answered my call to share:

• Why he stopped writing plays
• How Out of Order fills his creative juices differently
• Why audiences should come see his show (more than once 😂)
• What other aspects of his life are Out of Order
• So much more

Connect with Carl: Website, Instagram

1. This summer your new interactive parlor game Out of Order will be making its NYC premiere. What are you looking forward to most about bringing this type of event to New York City? I traveled with the show for most of 2024, performing in living rooms, a theatre lobby, a public park, and even a bird sanctuary. This piece has truly been road tested!

For this next run I worked with my director/collaborator Skylar Fox to create a version of the idea that felt almost like a sporting event, and really leaned into the taste and humor of New York audiences. It’s grittier, a bit darker, and also somehow more vulnerable and hopeful.

I put myself through a ringer and the audience comes along for the ride. I’m excited to share what feels like a great big culmination of everywhere and everything the show has been, while at the same time debuting this new reimagined version of the piece.

2. You have been writing plays for over 20 years, but when you turned 40, you couldn't write plays anymore. What do you feel happened to you that made you stop writing plays? I think I just started questioning why I had devoted my life to this pursuit that has in many ways made surviving harder. The idea of stopping, even as an experiment, felt more and more seductive. But of course, I ended up turning those feelings and that questioning into some kind of weird play.

Carl Holder
Promo Picture for Out of Order
Photo Credit: Connor Scully

3. As a result of not being able to write plays, you created Out of Order. How did Out of Order fill your creative juices differently? The play is performed in a different order every night. Writing something that could work in any/many ways tickled new parts of my brain.

As an actor, this is completely unlike anything I’ve done before. It doesn’t feel like doing a play.  It’s like an obstacle course I run myself through while people watch.

4. What is one reason you feel audiences should come see your show? It is literally never the same show twice. Every night is different and the audience gets to be present for that one night only uniqueness.

5. Press notes state that Out of Order "is a high-stakes game of emotional Russian Roulette, performed in an intimate space for only 30 people at a time. Carl’s fate rests inside the hands of the audience, and a giant bowl of index cards. Each card, pulled at random, holds a task designed to test his grit, his ingenuity, his emotional resilience, and his willingness to be humiliated." How did you decide which tasks to put on the index cards? The bowl has changed and grown over the years that I’ve been working on this idea.

For the NYC run we really wanted to make the evening feel like an event, a trial I have to go through with real immediate stakes. So every card has been newly imagined as a task I must complete.

If I don’t get through the bowl, I have to quit theatre forever. The cards that have made it into the bowl this round are hopefully a nice mix of impish questioning and genuine soul searching, all in the shape of a challenge I must complete.

The Index Cards Carl uses in Out of Order
Photo Courtesy of Carl Holder's Social Media

6. Since you don't know which cards will be pulled on any given night, how do you prepare for the task being asked of you? Lots of memorization and deep breaths. Then letting everything go. The secret is: nothing can go wrong when it’s all built to go wrong. The trick is remembering that!

7. What makes you nervous about this kind of performance? Literally everything. I have never done anything like this and that’s scary. As much as you can prepare, you also can’t because it is done in a different order every time. I do not know what is going to happen next. But that’s also exhilarating, fun, and very freeing. But also just…terror. Pure terror.

8. Out of all the index cards for audiences to choose from, which one will be the most awkward to perform? Every card is the most awkward card while I’m performing it.

9. Playing off of the show's title, Out of Order, outside of not being able to write plays at 40 years old, what is something else in your life that has been "Out of Order" for you? My sleep schedule, my eating habits, my normal life…you name it, I’ve done it wrong!

10. What would you like my audience to know about you that we didn't get to talk about in this interview? I’ve said too much already!

Carl Holder, Photo Credit: Sammy Tunis

More on Carl Holder:

Born in Gainesville Florida, Carl received his BFA in Acting from SUNY Purchase (2008), and an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU/Tisch (2020). His play Until You Come Back to Me won the 2020 Goldberg Play Prize and was a Finalist for the 2019 Neukom Literary Arts Playwriting Award. Carl was also a Semi-Finalist for The Jerome Fellowship at the Playwrights Center.

His play Waiter and Two Octopuses was a Semi-Finalist for the 2019 O'Neill Playwrights Conference and a 2018/19 Finalist for the DVRF Playwrights Program. Charleses received an Honorable Mention for The Relentless Award from The American Playwriting Foundation. 

Carl has twice been awarded an E-Grant from The Foundation for Contemporary Art for his plays An Intimate Evening with Typhoid Mary, and re:opening.

Carl has developed and/or performed work with Ars Nova, Incubator Arts Project, EST, Dennis and Victoria Ross Foundation, The Tank, FringeNYC, The Brick, Standard Toykraft, The Gym at Judson, House of Yes, Hearth Gods, Allegra LaViola Gallery, The Gene Frankel, Ice Factory and The New Ohio.

Carl has written, acted, and directed as Artistic Director of Glass Bandits Theater Company since 2008.

Carl is a 2024-25 Fellow in Target Margin Theater's Theatermaker Institute and was recently a member of The Bricks Inaugural Writer’s Group ‘SoundLab’ a residency developing fiction podcasts with playwrights. Carl has been a Scriptwriting Professor for the University of Virginia's Young Writers Workshop, the Performing Arts Instructor at Garden School in Jackson Heights Queens, Guest Artist/Workshop Instructor for SPARC New Voices, and guest lecturer in the Acting departments of SUNY Purchase and The New School.

Carl is currently teaching for NYU/Tisch’s Department of Dramatic Writing, as well as Playwriting Intensives through The Brick’s education program. Carl lives in Brooklyn.