BY KAREN BOSSICK

A three-year stint in the Peace Corps in Senegal helped turn Rajiv Joseph into a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer.

“I ended up in a remote village in Senegal where no one spoke English. I got by with the limited French I had in school but it was very isolating,” he said. “So, I ended up writing in a journal every day, and that turned into a habit. That’s what made me a writer—making writing a routine is what makes a writer.”

Joseph is following routine as the third playwright to win a Sun Valley Playwright’s Residency. He’s spending a month at the Ernest and Mary Hemingway House where, like Papa, he spends every morning writing, finally going hiking amidst the autumn splendor crowning Sun Valley at 2 p.m.

Come evening, he has dinner and reviews what he wrote earlier in the day.

Joseph hopes that what he’s started here will add to a list of plays that includes a Pulitzer Prize finalist  and two Obie Award-winning plays. He’ll return next year for a play reading of what he’s worked on here. But, first, on Saturday he will present a free play reading of his “Gruesome Playground Injuries.”

The play reading will feature local actors Aly Wepplo and David Janeski at 7 p.m. at the Argyros Performing Arts Center in Ketchum. Though free, reservations are required at https://theargyros.org/calendar/gruesome-playground-injuries/.

Joseph, who grew up in Cleveland, Ohio—the son of Indian immigrants—told those attending a conversation at The Community Library with Martha Williams that he got the idea for “Gruesome Injuries” while talking with a friend at a bar.

“He was telling me all these injuries he got over the years, which ended up being pivotal moments in his life. I thought, ‘If you ever wrote a memoir, every chapter could be an injury.’ He got up to get another  drink and I wrote the title of a play on napkin.”

The play revolves around a boy and girl who meet in the nurse’s office as first graders, following their lives and relationships for 30 years.

“I thought: If life could be marked by injuries, so could relationships. Why do some allow themselves to be hurt—or hurt themselves—to gain the affection of another?” he said.

Joseph envisioned himself a novelist. But he went to graduate school at 28 to be a screenwriter, spurred on by a friend in the industry. While at New York University, he saw a couple contemporary plays by living playwrights, including “Intimate Apparel.”

“That changed my life,” said Joseph who had before seen only musicals and Shakespeare.

Joseph’s works include Obie Awards for Best New American Play for “Guards at the Taj” and “Describe the Night.” He wrote the book and co-wrote lyrics for the musical “Fly” based on Peter Pan and he wrote the libretto for the opera “Shalimar the Clown,” based on Salman Rushdie’s novel.

He also co-wrote “Draft Day,” which starred Kevin Costner. And he was a writer on the TV series “Nurse Jackie.”

Joseph said a lot of TV writing involves sitting around the table brainstorming ideas with other writers.

“You’re hired to produce someone else’s dream or idea,” he said.

Playwriting allows him to bring his own vision to fruition.

“There’s something magical to me about creating something with the limitations of the stage, without special effects,” he said.

Joseph’s play “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” was inspired by a short story in the New York Times about soldiers guarding a Bengal tiger at the Baghdad Zoo after America Invaded Iraq. When one tried to feed the tiger, the tiger bit his hand off. Another soldier then shot and killed the tiger.

The ghost of the tiger in Joseph’s play haunts the streets of Baghdad seeking the meaning of life as he witnesses the absurdities of war and tells the audience how much it sucks to be a tiger in Baghdad.

The play was produced at the small Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles. An arts reporter for the Los Angeles Times not only gave it a glowing review but wound up on the Pulitzer Prize committee, which made it a finalist in 2010. Robin Williams then played the role of the tiger on Broadway.

“A series of happy accidents have led me to becoming a playwright and screenwriter,” Joseph said.

Joseph will conduct a playwriting workshop with local high school students while here. A collaboration with 12 college students ended up in a play in which they crafted one character for each month of the year, one for each horoscope.

Joseph said it’s a misnomer to call artificial intelligence AI. It should be “technological plagiarism.”  Joseph said he thinks AI will have some positive impacts on civilization, provided it isn’t destructive. But he is chagrined at the idea of telling AI to write a script in the style of Rajiv Joseph.

“The writing process is one mistake after another,” he said. “You can’t write a formula for what I do.”