A few questions with Johnny Drago

Drago’s story, “What Have I Done to You That You Beat Me These Three Times?,” won first place in <i>CL</i>’s 2012 Fiction Contest

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Johnny Drago is a writer, performer, and livestock enthusiast, whose play Kiss of the Vampire (Process Theatre Co.) recently won the Metropolitan Atlanta Theater Award for Best Original Work. Other local productions include Billy Budd: A Portrait in Seamen, Attack of the 6-Foot Vagina, and Buckhead is Burning. He’s currently at work on his first novel, as well as a one-man show titled The Community Theatre of Cruelty for the Atlanta Fringe Festival in May.

Drago’s story, “What Have I Done to You That You Beat Me These Three Times?,” won first place in CL’s 2012 Fiction Contest. We caught up with him to ask a few questions about his work.

Where did the idea for the story come from?

Well, I knew I wanted to write about friendship tested, and that I wanted it to feel somehow local and handmade. I knew I wanted to set it in some magical, parallel idea of the Old South. And I knew I wanted to strike a balance between the meditative qualities of Flannery O’Connor’s work and the joyful, absurd chaos of my own. I have no idea where the donkey came from. He just showed up one day, already stomping.