written by
Stan Peal

For more about Stan Peal, please visit his main page on ArtSavant.

Part of the magic of theatre is the spectacle of kinetics and passion that happens before your eyes, the illusion that feels more real than cinema, and sometimes more real than everyday life. But theatre begins as nothingness. Then comes an impulse, then an idea. Then a plan, then collaboration, and the result is a communal experience, infused with life and breath. Theatre is a powerful art form. Often for the actors, and sometimes for the audience, the created reality of the play is the only reality there is for those two hours. It is temporarily everything. From nothingness to everything in a few months, give or take.

Playwrights, of course, have the unique fortune to follow a play from its inception to its first onstage production, often participating in every stage of evolution. Just over a year ago, a scattering of unrelated observations would merge together to become what will be a fully staged production in June. I wrote The Friar and The Nurse, which will be the first production of Epic Arts Repertory Theatre (EARTh).

My first idea came when I saw Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. I thought the convention was brilliant. I had the same feeling when I saw the BareBones-Chickspeare co-production of Desdemona: a Play about a Handkerchief. How fascinating to take well known characters and show what happens to them between the scenes. After seeing Desdemona, I developed "playwright envy" and wished I could create my own, similar work. I tucked that idea away for later.

Around the same time, my wife, Laura Depta, and I were lamenting that we were both in theatre and, astoundingly, not yet rich. Laura said "What we need is something with wide appeal that we can perform ourselves, maybe tour locally." She reminded me that I Do, I Do! ran at the Chanhassen Dinner Theatre in Minnesota for twenty-five years, most of the run performed by the same married couple. We tried to find something we could perform together, but no interesting projects came along.

Next came auditions for a production of Romeo and Juliet. I wanted the Friar role pretty badly, and I started doing research before the audition. One of my little actor tricks is to figure out what the character is doing between scenes and what secret he holds from the rest of the characters that isn’t in the text. I decided he was having an affair with the Nurse. As I looked through the scenes to find out if they had the opportunity, that’s when everything came together. Not only did the structure of Romeo and Juliet allow for it, it suddenly seemed incredibly obvious. This could be my show about well-known characters between the scenes of their originating play; this is the show Laura and I can develop and perform together. I looked on the web to see if anyone had come up with the idea already. As far as I could tell, the coast was clear. The Friar and the Nurse was officially an idea for a script.

Big deal. I get lots of ideas, many of which I get pretty excited about. The problem is getting myself to actually sit down and write. Just having an idea isn’t enough; I usually need a deadline. As luck would have it, around that time (the summer of 2002) Anne Lambert, Director of Development at Charlotte Rep, encouraged me to apply for a Regional Artists Grant from the ASC. To apply, I had to have a project in mind. The Friar and The Nurse idea seemed like it would work well for the grant. Of the ideas I was engaged with at the time, it seemed the most original, the most marketable, the most easily produced, and it didn’t require a volcano spawning a skateboard grrrl, or a Hillary Clinton-esque character performing a Britney Spears song with new lyrics about a cheating, presidential husband. I’ll get to those shows some day, but this didn’t seem like the time.

In October of 2002, I was awarded the grant. That gave me a deadline; I had to produce the show within a year. It also provided enough money for theatre rental. After checking availability, we decided to rent the brand new Southend Performing Arts Center (SPAC) for June of 2003. To develop the script, which focused on Shakespearean characters developing an intimate relationship, Laura suggested Lon Bumgardner, a director she’d worked with twice, who she knew would be the best guy for the job. In November, we told him about the project. He was excited about the concept and asked to see a script. There wasn’t one yet, but he was good enough to agree anyway.

Laura and I also re-visited the idea of starting our own theatre company in Charlotte. There were particular kinds of shows we wanted to produce, write and perform that weren’t generally being done in town. We could see a niche for our style of theatre. Now we had a funded show at a new space, and the possibility of renting there in the future. This opportunity inspired us to take the risk and launch our new theatre company, Epic Arts Repertory Theatre (EARTh - where’s the fun in naming your own company if you can’t incorporate a clever acronym?). This was last December, and I needed to write the script. I had to set another deadline.

I finished a preliminary draft at the end of January, and read through it with Laura. She liked it. It had a strong beginning and middle, but it had a very Hollywood ending. Having people like Laura and Lon involved in the development process, it would have been foolish of me not to collaborate. So the process became a workshop-oriented development where I could use the strengths of other artists and still have all the writing credit. What a great deal! Laura suggested an alternate resolution, and the next time we read through it, we wept at the end. We figured that was a good ending.

In February, we had a meeting with Lon after he’d had the chance to read the draft. He liked it, but made some strong suggestions, specific to the tone of the piece. In March, the script was read at a meeting of BareBones’ Playmakers group, and local playwrights gave insightful feedback that led to more changes. In April, Laura Reed came on board as dramaturg and we groomed the script, specifying language and character. Now, in May, as we rehearse, Lon and Laura continue to help me shape the characters and story, refining and distilling the show into its best, cleanest form. Even now, a few weeks away from technical rehearsals (yikes) Lon made a change in the setting that, while requiring unexpected rewrites, has bumped the play up to a whole new level.

We have yet to add lighting, sound, props and costumes to further shape and mold the world of the play, but already the show has taken on a dynamic life that can only grow from the eclectic magic of theatrical collaboration. If all goes as it should, audiences who attend the show in June will be swept into the illusion and feel that they’ve experienced something real; something that just a year ago was nothing at all.

~ Stan Peal