1. GRAND UNION is a recent play you’ve submitted to the The Baltimore Playwrights Festival. What is it about?
The patriarch of the leading Jewish family in a small central Pennsylvania railroad town has died, and his son and daughter confront their 40-year history with their Black housekeeper. The play’s 10 scenes and a coda go back and forth over those 40 years, telling the history of the town and the two intertwined families.
2. What was your inspiration for GRAND UNION, and did that inspiration inform the style of the play?
I’m from Brooklyn, but my wife is from Hagerstown in western Maryland, and both sides of her family had strong roots in central Pennsylvania. We visited the area often, talked to relatives and got their stories. We also started looking over census records, and found some of them had live-in maids.
I began to write a simple one-scene play with the son and the daughter inviting the housekeeper for a final lunch, but they kept on talking about people who weren’t on stage–the housekeeper’s husband and son, the town’s young rabbi, and the patriarch. I thought, well, why not put them on stage? And that led to the scenes that cover all 40 years. In fact, while the first scene is in the present, the final coda goes back 40 years. And the actors play their characters at all ages–which is a challenge for them, but adds to the timelessness of the work.
3. What is your approach to creating a strong protagonist?
I like to write ensemble plays, where rather than one strong protagonist, every character has a strong story. In Grand Union, who the protagonist is is up to interpretation–it could be the daughter, who assumes she’ll inherit their large house, or it could be the housekeeper. But in any case, your protagonist has to want something almost more than life itself. They’ve sacrificed for it, they’ve dreamed of it. They don’t just want it–they need it.
4. Tell us about yourself.
I had the bad fortune to have some early successes in my 20s–my first three plays were produced in regional theater, and off-off-Broadway. Wow, I thought, this is easy! And then life happened. I got married, we had a child, and I focused on my other life. I felt freed, almost–being a writer is like having homework for the rest of your life.
I returned to my writing 15 years later or so, and found a home with BPF, who’ve done readings of two of my plays. I’ve got a play running now in Tampa, Lies, an O’Neill semifinalist which BPF read last year, through November 22.
5. Which of your plays was the hardest to write, and why?
Grand Union, no doubt. I rarely have to rethink the entire structure of a play, but here I did. Since I was writing also about the dynamics of a Black family, I had to be sensitive to that, and figure out what I really knew and what I only assumed. In the end I think it came out pretty well–it was a semifinalist for the Austin Film Festival’s playwriting competition.
6. What’s next for you?
I’m halfway through a comedy about Middle East politics transferred to a Midwestern suburb, and sketching out a play about why Americans seem to love to be taken by con men and charlatans. I’m retiring from the federal government soon, so I’ll have more time to write.