"More Character Sketches: The Hersey Brothers"

Continuing with more character sketches from Their Town, here are brief profiles of brothers Joe (straight) and Charlie (gay) Hersey:

JOE HERSEY

The mayor of Grover's Corners, N.H. - late 20s, a lawyer and a Dartmouth graduate. Joe is a single straight guy who doesn't date much, but could, if he wanted to - he's chosen to focus on his career. He is extremely polished and confident, a good speaker, and a charmer.

Joe is a savvy politician, a Democrat, born and raised in Grover's Corners, who convinced the town to change its charter to have a mayor instead of a board of selectmen as its governing authority. Some people think he's a bit too slick, but underneath his politician's exterior is someone who cares about issues and particularly about the town. He has seen lots of people his age have to leave town because of the lack of jobs and opportunities, and he's determined to find a way to reenergize the local economy. But at the same time, he is very ambitious, and determined to use the town as a steppingstone to higher office. He is aiming to be governor of the state someday, a dream he's held since childhood - and maybe from there, on to the White House! Sometimes, his ambition can hurt other people - as when he fails to consider how his plans for Grover's Corners might affect his colleague, town clerk Margaret Craig.

Joe has had a strained relationship with his brother, Charlie, who is also a lawyer. They were close growing up and in college and had even once discussed going into practice together. But Joe was uncomfortable when Charlie came out as gay (in a "how can my brother be so different from me?" way), and he also decided he didn't want to be part of a firm that mostly specialized in family-type law. He is slightly cowed by Charlie, too, who is nine months older and so did everything first.

CHARLIE HERSEY

An attorney, specializing in wills, estates, and similar concerns for gay clients - 30 years old, partnered for six years (but in an open relationship). He left Grover's Corners for good when he went to college, having felt smothered there as a queer kid, and now lives in Manchester, where there is a visible gay community. Like his younger brother, Joe, he is personable, charming, savvy, with a quick wit. But he does not have Joe's political ambition. Also, he is to the left of Joe on the political spectrum, veering toward Socialist.

Charlie considers his work as a lawyer to be activism for the gay community. He has strong opinions about the direction the gay movement is taking, and isn't afraid to voice them - in fact, he has made some statements that other activists take offense at. Most importantly, he's not a big fan of the push for same-sex marriage - he considers marriage a patriarchal, oppressive institution that gay people should not aspire to, and he would rather see gay people working for more traditionally leftie concerns, like universal health care.

But at heart, Charlie is concerned about what's best for the gay community, and that is what motivates him to step in when Joe needs a gay couple to get married. While other people in the play are using gay marriage for their own purposes - for example, Joe and Lyle for political reasons; Eliza, to hold her relationship together - Charlie has no agenda. He simply steps forward because he sees it as the right thing to do.

"Queer Theater"

In case you're interested (and since you're reading this, you probably are), I found this online listing of gay and lesbian-supportive theater companies called "On the Purple Circuit."

Of course, there are other theater companies that don't only (or specifically) do queer-themed plays, but that produce them occasionally. My research, however, indicates that these gay-themed plays tend to be the established, major-prize-winning ones - like Angels in America, Take Me Out, or I Am My Own Wife.

There are a handful of queer theater festivals out there, but I haven't located a concise listing of them. Interestingly, when I Googled "lesbian and gay theater festivals" today, I found one I'd never heard of - the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival.

So, if you're writing queer-themed plays, it definitely takes some sniffing around to find venues for your work.

"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"?

"MySpace"

Setting up a MySpace page for Their Town (suggested to me by an arts marketing pro) has been like a quick and painful trip back to high school.* First, I spent a lot of time carefully constructing my page - inputting my likes and dislikes, a bio, a couple of blog entries about my play - then I scrolled down the page to see what it all looked like. Of course, my eye landed on the "Friends" section, with its taunting words: "You have 0 friends."

Well, damn, don't I look like a loser. I do have friends! I even had friends in high school! But nobody on MySpace cares unless you have the pics to prove it.

My friend and fellow writer Kathy Miller Haines (who has, ahem, 104 "friends") gave me some advice about finding like-minded MySpacers. Armed with her tips, I went through the groveling-like procedure of inviting a few dozen people to be my "friends." Now I am waiting to see how many of them accept or reject me. Stay tuned for the elation or heartbreak.

I'll probably dream tonight of forgetting my locker combination or getting to my algebra test late or standing naked in the auditorium…

*Completely off-topic footnote: High school was the last time I was actually in a theatrical production - both nonspeaking roles. I was a Jet girl in West Side Story and a suffragette in Hello Dolly! But I still have fantasies about acting... no, really of winning an Oscar.

"Read Me"

You can click here to read the first 10 pages of Their Town. You'll need an Adobe PDF reader to do this.

Is There a Director in the House?

Adam Kukic, artistic director of the engagingly named Pittsburgh-based company Thank You, Felix Productions, has signed on to direct Their Town. Adam and Thank You, Felix consistently get great notices, so this is very good news for Their Town. And although he looks a little worried in this photo, I can assure you it's not because of my play.

You can read some of the raves about Adam's company here.

What's It All About? A Synopsis of Their Town

Margaret Craig, a single mother who has been struggling to support her 16-year-old daughter, has recently landed a good, solid job: she's been elected town clerk of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire - of Our Town fame. At the same time, the town's new, young mayor, Joe Hersey, who ran on the same ticket with Margaret, wants to further his own career and aid the economy of his beleaguered town by garnering publicity in a sensational way - by performing a legal marriage ceremony for two of the town's lesbian citizens, longtime residents Ginny Gibbs and Eliza Webb.

But the town council president, Lyle Hawkins starts a "Take Back Our Town" movement that threatens Margaret's new job if she doesn't obey the state law against same-sex marriage. Worried about her job and certain that gay marriage has nothing to do with her, Margaret refuses to issue the license. Joe, however, devises another plan, with the help of a gay-rights attorney, to file a lawsuit against the state, using other, more "professional" couples than Ginny and Eliza. The two women turn to Joe's gay brother, Charlie, an out-of-town lawyer, to help them win the right to marry in their town.

But in the meantime, Margaret is drawn deeper and more unwillingly into the issue by a personal crisis that brings home the political issue of equal marriage rights. Leading Margaret in her coming-to-terms process is a statue come-to-life of Thornton Wilder, author of Our Town and creator of Grover's Corners - who was himself, Margaret learns, a closeted homosexual.

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.