Spotlight: Hunter plays to Idaho roots

Sam Hunter is creating his own private Idaho.

Many of his plays – the Obie-winning “A Bright New Boise,” being staged in Moscow through Oct. 19, and “The Whale,” which won a Drama Desk award, among them – are set in his home state.

The 33-year-old Moscow native – who last month won a MacArthur Fellowship, the $625,000 “genius grant” – admits his version of Idaho is make believe.

“Most of my plays have very little do with what Idaho really is. Idaho’s become kind of a blank canvas,” he said. “It’s like I have a play opening in New York in a couple months called ‘Pocatello.’ It’s set in Pocatello, but it’s pretty much an entirely fictionalized Pocatello.”

While his Idaho is purely fictionalized, he likes writing about it because “it grounds the plays for me very immediately in this place I have a very deep emotional relationship with and spiritual relationship with and physical relationship with. So there’s a specificity and a realness I can bring to the play as a writer.”

He sees it as almost a theme he carries across several plays, that this fictional geography of Idaho is part of a larger work or story arc.

“I’m not sure what the end result is, but it feels like it’s part of this larger project, and that the plays are connected somehow,” he said.

As part of that, he has two new plays that are beginning the workshop process in the San Francisco Bay area: “Lewiston” and “Clarkston,” a foray into neighboring Washington.

“ ‘Clarkston’ is set in the Costco in Clarkston, and ‘Lewiston’ is set at a fireworks stand off a highway in Lewiston.”

The grant gives him financial stability for the next five years or longer – allowing him opportunity to explore the Idaho of his mind.

“What I don’t want it to do is impact the work in anyway, other than allow me to do more of it,” Hunter said. “I don’t want it to change what I’m doing.”