The What:
In 2009 I wrote a play. I used to look at playwrights and think, HOW do their brains think like that?? How can their brains structure and conceive of ideas for stories, of characters, etc., etc. So color me surprised when I wrote one.
What it's about: Mara has just taken over her very-recently-deceased dad's position at a vintage car restoration shop in Berkeley, CA, run by his best friend of 30 years. She meets, and is pursued by, Patrick, a younger man who is a professor of anthropology at the university. Hesitantly, she allows herself to fall in love with him. On a business trip to Boston, Mara literally runs into Daniel, the love of her life who left her six years earlier and realizes his mistake. Based on and inclusive of modern day love poetry of folks like Alice Walker, Noel Coward, and James Tipton.
How it came to be: I began writing this play on a jalopy of a bus from New York to DC four and a half years ago. I recall sitting in a Starbucks in Dupont Circle, summoning the nerve to write my first love scene. I sat in that damn coffee shop for three hours. I went to see my friend Julie, who was taking a break from singing on dancing on Broadway to have a baby. As she fed Adrienne her first solid foods, she listened patiently while I read scenes aloud to her. That woman has the patience of a saint. Julie's the one who came up with my lead characters' names. I like Irish names, and I told her I was leaning toward something like Fiona and Declan. It sounds like you're trying too hard, she said. You want something easier, like...what about like Patrick and Mara? And thus, Patrick and Mara it was.
Where did this play come from? Since grad school, I'd loved an amazing book called 'Bleeding Hearts: Love Poems for the Nervous and Highly Strung.' It was full of these poems from people like Neruda, Maya Angelou, AC Bevan, AR Ammons, and more. The poems were, sad, funny, lustful, reflective, vengeful. From there on out floated a foggy notion to create a story out of its contents. And one day, six years later, this seed of an idea spilled out of me in the form of a northern California love story. It has gone through many variations over the last four years through staged readings, discussions over coffee, and many loving suggestions of friends and colleagues. I grew four characters into eight, a hugely intimidating task at the time. I remember staring out of the window of the Long Island Railroad as I traveled from my then-boyfriend's in Huntington back into the city. watching as the sun came up, dazed at the notion of figuring out how to take the wonderful and scary suggestions (which I knew were spot on) and create something better, something more. The character 'Mara' morphed from being a PhD in feminist literature to running a garage restoring classic cars. Why Northern California? It's where I grew up, and I've always had a warior-like love for it. Fog, Russian River, banana slugs, Sees candy, and the hilly streets of the Bay Area. It's my biggest wish to take this production back to my roots: my hometown. I sure do wish my momma were still here to see it.
