New Production for "Their Town"

I'm happy to report that Their Town will get a brand-new production in Allentown, Pa., in February 2009 as part of the National Freedom to Marry Day celebrations. I was thrilled when Dean Hiatt found out about the play at my MySpace page and contacted me, asking to read the script. In just a very short time, he's put together a new theater company and is mounting a full season of exciting work, beginning with The Big Voice: God or Merman? next month. Visit the Rainbow Players Theater Company website for more on what they're up to, and to watch for updates on the upcoming production of my play!

"In the News"

I read some news on Friday that means I will have to revisit the ending of Their Town - not a huge revision, but a slight tweaking of a couple of scenes. New Hampshire is poised to become the fourth state (joining Vermont, Connecticut, and New Jersey) to offer civil unions to same-sex couples - very good news for the gay community, even though it's not legal marriage. (Only Massachusetts offers that.)

Ah, the trials of writing about current events! My next play (now in the works, called The Basement) is a relationship play with no basis in politics.

"Sketching a Life"

I thought readers might be interested from time to time in a sketch of the main characters in Their Town. Let's start with the protagonist.

Margaret Warren Craig is the main character of Their Town. She's a straight woman, about 35, newly elected as the Town Clerk of Grover's Corners, N.H., basically kind of unsure of her abilities, but trying really hard to believe in them. She has a good sense of humor.

Margaret married right out of high school, and has a daughter, Annie, 16. Margaret hasn't traveled much, and has lived in the town all her life. She has been divorced from her high school sweetheart, Tom, for about two years - he cheated on her, and she is not really over it. The divorce sent Margaret, who had only had part-time jobs in the past, into a panic - although Tom pays some child support, Margaret's primary concern has been making enough money and having a stable enough job to provide for Annie on her own. That, she feels, is what will make her "a good mother." Her duty as a parent is, to her, the most important thing.

Just after the divorce, Margaret used her training as a secretary to get a job as the office manager of a N.H. granite tombstone company. The Grover's Corners economy is depressed, and this was the best job she could get, albeit one that required her to commute 90 miles roundtrip a day. She was worried that she was not home enough for Annie. When her friend Joe Hersey suggested she run as Grover's Corners Town Clerk at the same time that he run for mayor - and on the same ticket - she gave it a shot and won. Town clerks generally die in their jobs; the benefits and pay are good, for the area; and Margaret now feels like her life and Annie's are "settled," taken care of. She feels like she has finally found her footing, and the job has boosted her self-confidence.

So Joe's surprise plan to make Grover's Corners a sort of gay Mecca - by virtue of marrying a same-sex couple there - scares and angers Margaret, because she could be taken down with him. She has never really thought much about gay people or their concerns - she's someone who thinks it's not really any of her business. She knows gay people, but only peripherally. However, she's not particularly religious, and she's an adherent to the state motto: "Live free or die." Still, when she discovers her own daughter is gay, that's another matter - and one that throws her for a loop. She would just like things to go back to "normal" - whatever that is. The question Margaret ultimately has to answer for herself is: What does it mean to be "a good mother" to a daughter who's not what society sees as "normal"?

How I Decided to Write Their Town

...And Why You Should Care

I wrote the first draft of my play Their Town in late 2004, after reading and re-reading a lot of classic American drama, including Thornton Wilder's Our Town. In the past, I had written fiction and nonfiction exclusively, and was just starting to dip into playwriting.

Doing some online research on Wilder's play, I learned that Our Town is produced on some stage in this country every single day of the year. It struck me as ironic that the most-produced play in the U.S. - considered so quintessentially "American" that many of the productions are in high schools and small-town theaters - was written by a closeted gay man. (More on Wilder in another post.)

At the same time that I was re-reading Our Town, the straight mayors of San Francisco and New Paltz, N.Y., were making headlines on same-sex marriage rights; the clerk of Sandoval County, N.M., began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples; and Massachusetts became the first state to extend marriage rights to gay people. There were numerous news stories about how (heterosexual) town clerks suddenly had to deal with unforeseen problems - like creating gender-free marriage licenses, readying their offices for a possible barrage of marriage license requests, or having to follow a law they personally didn't agree with. The situation seemed ripe for drama. I wrote the play first as a one-act of about 20 pages, called "Our Town 2," but my very smart peer writing group, SPEC (short for "Screenwriters and Playwrights Eat and Critique"), said it needed to be much longer. And that's how Their Town was born.

Three years ago, I remember feeling an urgency to finish the play and get it "out there," thinking that the topic of same-sex marriage would be stale in a short time. But here we are in 2007, and marriage rights are still a hot-button issue. Massachusetts remains the only state to grant marriage rights to same-sex couples.

This blog will chronicle the path of Their Town as it moves closer to its first production in June 2007 at the Pittsburgh Pride Theater Festival, a program of Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company.