So Fenway: Last of the Bohemians, is set to be published online by Indie Theatre Now.
Anyway, below are my author's notes for Fenway. No doubt, there are names missing that I will add as soon as I get them.
AUTHOR’S NOTES – The
inspiration to write Fenway came on the night that George W. Bush got
re-elected. I was at The Magician,
a bar on the Lower East Side of NYC, watching the returns with some friends,
and I wondered what happened to all those people from the 1960’s who were
supposed to change the world?
Where were those lost idealists and protesters? It seemed like they had
all vanished, died, or sold out. I
started to think about how liberalism had seemed to be on the decline in
America since about 1980, when Reagan got elected, and how hippies were now
pretty much a joke, a mostly forgotten stereotype. And somehow, I got to thinking about Uncle Vanya.
I have loved the play Uncle Vanya ever since I saw a
production of it done at
The Western Stage of Salinas directed by my friend Jon
Selover. It’s so funny and sad and
pertinent. I remember watching Julian Lopez-Morillas as Astrov in Act Three
going on about the shrinking forests and thinking maybe the speech was an
insert, penned by a modern writer.
But no, turns out old Anton was an environmentalist. This particular production was
brilliant- fast and furious and thought provoking- not unusual for that theatre
company. If there was one part of
the play that I didn’t completely relate to, it was how Vanya was so mad at
Serebryakov. I got that Vanya was
in love with the professor’s wife- but there was a deeper sense of betrayal at
the professor. I don’t know if it
was that version of the script (Mamet’s), or where I was in my life at the
time, but it just didn’t quite click for me. But then, watching George W. Bush on the screen, it
clicked. Serebryakov was a
sell-out, the equivalent of all those people from the 1960’s who had once stood
for peace, love and understanding but had decided to instead become staunch
defenders of the status quo. And I
could see in my mind’s eye Uncle Vanya set in the 1980’s, during the Reagan
Revolution, on an old hippie commune.
Astrov could be a Greenpeace type who works at a methadone clinic, Vanya
a burnt out ex-hippie, and Serebyrakov a former radical turned
conservative. Often, when I get an
idea for a play, it’s like that. I
see the whole world, and several of it’s characters. I don’t sleep much, and become sort of annoying to people,
as all I can talk about for weeks is the story. I wrote the first draft quickly. I would have friends over to read scenes as they were being
written- including Jack Halpin, Christine Goodman, Heather McAllister, and Tim
McCracken. I told Tim Errickson
about the idea. He had directed a
production of Vanya at Expanded Arts in which I played Astrov, and I knew he
would dig it. He did, and soon
there was a reading as part of
Boomerang Theatre’s First Flight, and it felt
pretty groovy. Re-writes were
done, and another reading/lab was done up at Lincoln Center, using the talents
many fine actors, including Julie Congress and Dan O’Neill. The next draft was given a
reading by BeaconNY Productions, and used such talented wonders as Christopher
Grabowski, Tara Falk, and Diane Buglewics Foote. One of the great joys of writing plays is all the
talented artists you get to work with- each with a unique perspective that adds
to the soul of the show. I wrote
and re-wrote, and the wrote some more.
Many rewrites- with so much help from Lisa that she became co-author-
and it was ready for a full production, which happened in the fall of 2006 as a
co-production between the Boomerang Theatre Company and
Impetuous Theatre Group, with Jack Halpin,
Carrie Brewer,
Reyna de Courcy,
Margaret
A. Flanagan,James David Jackson,
Tom Knutson,
Paul Navarra and was directed by
Tim Errickson.
In 2009, there was a workshop reading of the play at the
Oregon Shakespeare Festival, in their Black Swan Lab run by Lue Morgan Douthit with a cast that included Gregory Lingington,
Richard Howard, Jeffrey
King, Derrick Lee Weeden, Terri McMahon, Vilma Silva, Catherine E. Coulson,
Miriam A. Laube, Ryan Anderson and Tyrone Wilson. In early 2010, a reading was given by
the
Seattle Playwrights Collective directed by Dan Tarker with
Alysha Curry, Gene Thorkidsen, Sherry Narens, Gary Estrada, Griffith Kadiner, Dolores Rodgers, and Richard Hawkin. Several re-writes came about from
those two readings, and the version you have is the latest draft, based on all
three productions/workshops.
I would encourage people doing this play to seek the comedy
as much as possible. And look up
all the songs they mention in the script.
In this day of the interne, Youtube and Google, it is inexcusable to not
research all references in a play.
Enjoy!
