Bess Wohl’s Silent ‘Small Mouth Sounds’ Opens Long Wharf Season

Bess Wohl finds depth in high concepts. In her attention-grabbing ensemble drama “Small Mouth Sounds,” there is almost no dialogue and very few sounds at all. The play, set at a wilderness retreat where the participants all take a vow of silence, opens the 2017-18 season at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, where it plays Aug. 30 through Sept. 24.

The first play Bess Wohl wrote was “Cats Talk Back,” which played at another New Haven theater, the Yale Cabaret, in 2001. Wohl was in the acting program at the Yale School of Drama then. The show promoted itself as an actual talkback discussion with members of the Broadway cast of the musical “Cats.” The publicity was so convincing that some regular attendees of the risk-taking student-run theater stayed home because they weren’t interested in “Cats.”

“We marketed it like a real talkback,” Wohl recalls in a phone interview earlier this month. “We had awkward things happen in it. On the first night, we had no idea how people would react. It was a great experience.”

“Cats Talk Back” was a highlight of an already outstanding Yale Cabaret season. “We did it again, at the New York International Fringe Festival,” Wohl says. “We got Jesse McKinley, who did the ‘Onstage and Off’ column for The New York Times, to moderate it. It was the thing that launched my writing career.”

Wohl “pursued the life of an actor” for a few years “but I was always writing. Now, I haven’t acted in years. It’s too hard for me, to go back and forth.”

Often working with such forward-thinking theater companies as Ars Nova and The Civilians, Wohl now has half a dozen produced plays to her credit, including “American Hero” and the musical “Pretty Filthy.”

Thinking about that formative writing experience at Yale, Wohl realizes that “the funniest thing about those two plays, ‘Cats Talk Back’ and ‘Small Mouth Sounds,’ is that the set is exactly the same — a line of folding chairs.”

After she came up with the initial quietness concept for “Small Mouth Sounds,” Wohl says writing the play took “a lot of false starts and failed attempts. I’m starting to learn that is just my writing process. On page two of the script, it says ‘We will be observing silence. You just throw down that challenge. You set up that premise. Then how do you follow that through?

Wohl recognizes that her work, which regularly questions long-accepted theatrical conventions, can be challenging not only for audiences but for producers and investors.

But, she’s learned, “people like a challenge. If it’s hard to produce, or hard to market, it kind of inspires the producers to work harder or in new ways, and it gets to be the way I want it to be. It’s OK to ask more of people.”

The Long Wharf’s presentation of “Small Mouth Sounds” is part of a six-city national tour. It’s unusual (though not unheard of) for the Long Wharf to present a show it has not produced itself. It’s also uncommon for an uncompromising straight play from off Broadway like “Small Mouth Sounds” to tour at all. Performance rights have already been released to some small theaters, and international productions are in the works.

“It’s a great play to do in other countries,” Wohl says, laughing, “because you don’t have to translate it.”

A new cast has been found for the tour. “The cast in New York felt they’d explored it in New York,” Wohl says. “Also, my hope was that the play would give these great actors some exposure, and it did. Some of them have other projects already.

“Our new cast,” the playwright continues, “is incredible. It’s fun to have them approach it for the first time. They’re asking questions I’ve never heard before.”

Wohl has been attending rehearsals, which involves visiting her old college stomping grounds of New Haven.

Wohl is still in touch with many of her Yale classmates. Among the cast of “Cats Talk Back” 16 years ago were Trip Cullman, who directed Wohl’s play “Touched” for the Williamstown Theatre Festival; Brad Heberlee, who appeared in the first New York production of “Small Mouth Sounds”; and Jackson Gay, who’s directed workshops of Wohl’s next play “Make Believe.” Hartford Stage just received a National Endowment for the Arts grant to develop “Make Believe,” and is considering producing the play during the 2018-19 season.

Wohl is also “trying to write about climate change. Something true, but also a fun night at the theater.” That script, “Continuity,” had some staged readings in July at the Cape Cod Theatre Project in Falmouth, Mass.

While moving forward with new ideas, she’s been helping the “Small Mouth Sounds” tour come together. The show is directed, as it was in New York, by Rachel Chavkin, whose other big recent directing credit is the Broadway musical “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812.”

“It’s the same director, but she’s reimagining the play,” Wohl says. “The staging is related to what we did before, but it feels brand new in a lot of ways.

“I wrote this three years ago. Things have changed so much. It’s about a retreat. Coming together in a quiet environment resonates differently.”

SMALL MOUTH SOUNDS plays Aug. 30 to Sept. 24 at the Long Wharf Theatre, 222 Sargent Dr., New Haven. Performances are Tuesday and Wednesday at 7 p.m., Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m., with added matinees Sept. 9, 16 and 23 at 3 p.m. and Sept. 13 and 20 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $34.50 to $90.50. 203-787-4282, longwharf.org.