Indy Theatre Habit

I had heard that Jacob M. Appel, the playwright of “Three Belles of Eden,” was flying in from New York City for the first Saturday night of this play’s world premiering run at Epilogue.  I asked if I could ”ask him some questions” after the show.  He very graciously agreed, and one of the cast members, Priscilla Ruddell, said that I was welcome to talk with him at the post-show party at her home. 

All of this was a new experience for me.  I had a wonderful time – the Ruddells’ home is gorgeous, and I enjoyed chatting with them and with ”Three Belles” director, Norris Wright, and several other Epilogue people – but I think in the future I will bravely use the word “interview” and make an appointment for a time and location that is not at a party.  Appel is reserved but also a generous, focused listener.  Some day I would like to talk to him again when it is just the two of us.  At the party, people understandably kept coming over to congratulate the playwright and/or to tell us about themselves, so I kept losing my train of thought. (Hah!  What can I say?  I am easily distracted.)

But as I say, I had a wonderful time, one I would not have missed for the world.  I appreciate the help of all who made it possible for me to meet Appel and his friend, Megan Savage.  (More about her in a moment.)

I was curious, first of all, about how the Indianapolis Epilogue Players had come to produce this New York playwright’s new play.

Appel told me that he had entered the 2006-2007 Heller Theatre Original Play Competition in Oklahoma.  That led to “Three Belles” being given a staged reading by the Round the Bend Players, a Tulsa theatre group that, like Epilogue, gives opportunities to actors, directors, and designers who are over 50 years old.  (By the way, the staged reading was reviewed by Karen Shade in the August 26, 2006 edition of Tulsa World.)

Appel was unable to attend that reading, but someone else was there and contacted him afterwards for a copy of the script.  That person then suggested several community theatres around the country that Appel should contact about producing his play.  One of those theatres was Epilogue. 

Appel told me very seriously, “Indianapolis is a great theatre city.  Everyone knows Epilogue.”  This made me laugh, but I appreciated his kindness.  And who knows?  Maybe Indianapolis is a bigger dot on the theatre map than I realize!

Appel is very grateful to Epilogue for producing his play.  “Other than your family,” he said, “there is no greater joy in life than seeing your play enacted on stage.”

I was also curious about how Appel came to be a playwright.  If you “Google” him, you find that he is primarily a bioethicist (more about this in a moment, too) and an award-winning short story writer.

He told me that he studied playwriting with Tony-nominated playwright Tina Howe.  Also, his friend, Sara Ruhl, who won a MacArthur genius grant, dared him: you write a play and I will write a short story.  She still has not written a short story, but he wrote a play, loved doing it, and so has been writing plays ever since.  “Writing plays is a very public activity,” he said.  “Writing short stories is very private” (and therefore difficult.)  “Writing a play is FUN.”

His other plays include “Arborophilia” and “In the Floodplain.”

“Three Belles” director Norris Wright was sitting in on our conversation.  He told about a play he was working on and asked Appel for advice.

Appel said, “You’ve heard of method acting?  Well, I’m a method playwright.  I picture the actors moving around on the stage.”

He also said that a playwright should try to write plays with robust, vibrant characters.  I told him that he had succeeded with “Three Belles.”  I told him that what I kept thinking as I watched the Epilogue production was, “These are such juicy roles for older actors!  Everyone is going to want to produce this play!”

Appel also advised aspiring playwrights to think about their acting pool if they want their plays to be produced.  Most actors are women in their early 20s or women 40 and over, yet most parts are written for middle-aged men.

The three plays he has written since “Three Belles of Eden” have had only female characters in them.  He said that perhaps this is because the most inspiring plays today are by women writing about women:  Paula Vogel, Tina Howe, etc..  But also, “women are more interesting to write about.”  He grew up surrounded by men, but always wanted a sister.  He was fascinated by women because there were none around while he was growing up.

The impetus for ”Three Belles” was a 60-year-old colleague of his that lives in an assisted living center.  Everyone else in the center is 25 years older.  His anecdotes gave Appel a window into that world.  No matter how old you get, a part of you always feels like a kid.  (Yes!  I thought.  You never think you’re too old for mountain climbing.  Or sex!)

I asked Appel about his work as a bioethicist.   I had found an article in which he was quoted on the ethics of assisted suicide, and another that he wrote himself on the historical context of euthanasia.   One of the themes of “Three Belles of Eden” is whether or not bitterly unhappy Grace would be better off dead.

Appel said, “A bioethicist takes ethical issues and applies them to a medical setting.  The best way to think of it is with a story.”  (A story!  This is when I knew for sure that Appel is a man after my own heart!) 

A patient walks into a hospital, bleeding from a bullet wound in his gut.  He says, “Please take care of me.  I do not want to die.  BUT, I also do not want any black or Jewish doctors or nurses to work on me.”  Then he passes out.  What do you do?

Appel said that there are are endless permutations of this story, and there are not necessarily any right answers, but it is very important that we as citizens have discourse about this.   He teaches bioethics for Brown University in Rhode Island.

He also said, “We don’t have a discourse for talking about death in our culture.  Our culture is almost unique in this.  We don’t pause long enough when someone dies to appreciate the richness and meaning that has just been lost to us.  We need to acknowledge this.  Fear of death is worse than death itself.  We could make the fear of death more tolerable to people if we had more discourse.  But we don’t want to.” 

I asked him if he thought “Three Belles of Eden” would help with the discourse on death. 

“Maybe.”  But he is a fan of comedies of manners rather than the theatre of ideas.  He doesn’t think a play should be an intellectual void, but it should be about human relationships rather than human thought.  “I would rather snuggle up at night with Tolstoy than Dostoevksy.”

(Or was that Dostoevsky rather than Tolstoy?  One of the things I loved about “Three Belles of Eden,” too, was its wealth of literary references, but man, I am not as well read as I would like to be!)

Appel is much younger than I had expected, especially given all he has accomplished in his life so far.  He has four master’s degrees and a law degree.  He is a year away from his PhD and is nearing completion of a medical degree as well.  “Anyone who doesn’t know that school is more fun than work needs to go back to school!”  But he does work: he writes and he teaches.  “I love teaching!  I’ll teach anything.”  In addition to teaching bioethics at Brown, he also teaches creative writing at various locations.

Two things are of most concern to him: 

1)  “We need to have NEW plays in the theatre.  Without new plays, you’ll have no new work and you will have lost your theatre audience.”  In other words, safe, stock plays are wonderful, but if all we ever see are ‘Our Town’ and ‘Grease,’ that’s bad.   “I am grateful to Epilogue and to other small theatres for producing new plays.”

2)  “Some playwrights think the only thing that matters is getting their plays produced in the New York theatres.  But the most exciting theatre is being done in small theatres in places like Indianapolis.  Theatres and theatre audiences there are passionate and grateful.  They are willing to take risks.  They feel themselves lucky to have theatre, unlike people in New York, who sometimes take it for granted that someone is producing theatre.  Producing theatre is hard work.  It is a labor of love.  I’m grateful when I go to the theatre and I wish more people felt that way.”

I asked him how he managed his time, how he was able to be so prolific.

He said, “I tell my writing students you can have three things:  your family, your job, and your writing.  In other words, the semester you take my class is not a good time to also take up basket weaving or some other hobby.   Ideally, your writing will eventually take the place of your job in terms of earning you a living, but not everyone wants that.  I’d be unhappy if I just wrote.  I like doing the bioethics at the hospital, too.  But you have to think of writing as your calling, your responsibility.” 

(This moved me to embarrassing tears.  My little theatre reviews blog may seem insignificant to some, but to me it feels like a calling.   I am called to learn about theatre through my writing, and called to write about Indianapolis area theatre in a way that no one else is.)

By this point in the conversation I was completely smitten, and very curious about Appel’s personal life.  I especially wondered if he, like his “Three Belles” character, Clara, ever wished he had spent less time working and more time loving.  I wasn’t sure how to politely ask about that, though, so instead I asked, ”Do you have any children?”

No children but “I am very close to my grandparents.  My grandfather passed away two months ago.”  His grandfather was a big part of his life.  For the past 35 years, Appel would go to see his grandparents twice a week.

His teachers are enormously important to him, too.  People are surprised to learn that he has five high school teachers that he keeps in touch with monthly.

Mentoring his own students is very important to him, too.  “However, you can not mentor every student.” 

I said, “You will burn out.”

“Yes, and you will do a disservice to your students.  If you have 600 students and try to mentor each of them, they will start to see that they are only one of many and you won’t be mentoring anyone.  But you can have 10-15 students over the years…you would do anything for them.

“You know they say that you value your own success most until you have children, and then you value their success most.  I used to think that the best thing would be to take my book off the shelf in a bookstore, but now I know that taking one of my student’s books off the shelf would be even more rewarding.  There is nothing more exciting than when a student gets a story published or a play produced or when a student wins a grant or award.”

His friend, Megan Savage, is also a short story writer, and a poet.  Both she and Appel have stories coming out soon in Subtropics, the literary magazine from the University of Florida.  Savage herself is based in Bloomington, Indiana, at least for right now.  She has just completed her Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing and serves as an associate fiction editor for the Indiana Review.  

Since Savage knows both Appel’s plays and his short stories, I asked her how they differ.  She said his plays are funnier, more whimsical, with more character-based humor than his short stories, which are darker and in which the humor comes from situational absurdism.

I would like to read some of those stories some day.

Hope Baugh – www.IndyTheatreHabit.com