The kids are all right.
Playwright Bess Wohl and director Jackson Gay, old friends working together for the first time in years, are at Blue State Coffee in Main Street. They’re sharing their feelings about the grand theatrical experiment they call “Make Believe,” a new adult-themed drama with comic elements and a precocious young cast, which runs through Sept. 30 at Hartford Stage.
“I have this vivid memory of walking down a street with you,” Wohl recalls, turning to Gay, “and saying ‘What about a play with only children?’ And I think you said, ‘That’s a horrible idea’.”
As parents, the dangers and challenges were immediately clear to both of them — “It would be children dealing with adult issues, and there could be nothing cutesy or performative about the acting,” Gay says.
Though it’s a show full of children, it’s a show for adults about childhood trauma. “Make Believe” shows children reacting to violence, harsh language, domestic abuse, depression, loss, anxiety and divorce. They insult each other, tell scary stories, and joke about poop. There are adults in the cast (Brad Heberlee, Megan Byrne, Molly Ward and recent Hartford Stage “Romeo and Juliet” star Chris Ghaffari), but they don’t share any scenes with the children.
“The kids have been amazing,” Wohl says, praising the young actors’ professionalism and candor.
“They brought a love of theater and pretend. A lot of honesty. They groaned at some of my rewrites. They say things that adult actors will think but not say out loud. Also, Jackson has the patience of a saint.”
The children have been “patient and reliable,” Gay says. “They learned their lines faster than the adult actors.” The young performers — Roman Malenda (11), Alexa Skye Swinton (9), RJ Vercellone (8) and Sloane Wolfe (10) — have also had to learn new lines throughout the rehearsal process, since “Make Believe” is an open experiment.
The work is hard, “but everyone in the room wants to make sure they have fun. They’re so joyful, playful. That became one of the big challenges,” the director says. “How to direct a play about childhood trauma without affecting them.”
One solution, Wohl found, was to “to write it as kids pretending. The audience members project what must be happening to them while they play these innocuous childhood games. The kids are tasked with pretending and playing. Part of what I’m going for is, at the beginning, almost a sense of voyeurism. We are looking into a child’s world.”
In a phone interview from London (where she’s dramaturging the West End production of Matthew Lopez’s new drama “The Inheritance”), Hartford Stage’s Associate Artistic Director Elizabeth Williamson describes how “a couple of years ago, Bess said she had an idea for a new play but she didn’t think we’d be interested in it. When she said that, of course, I got very interested.” Williamson, who has been involved with four other Wohl plays in the past, is serving as the production dramaturg for “Make Believe.”
Working with little more than a concept, Wohl got to writing and Hartford Stage arranged a private workshop for “Make Believe,” then another one.
“The first workshop we did, she’d written a few scenes,” Williamson says. “We figured out how long we could sustain those scenes. Then Bess said, ‘It might be refreshing to see them as adults’.”
“The adults came in,” Wohl adds, “not from the feeling that ‘we need adults,’ but from curiosity, for what these characters would be like in adulthood.”
Williamson’s main contribution was to help shape the work from these amorphous beginnings. “How the structure works, that’s what I’m strongest at as a dramaturg,” she says.
“These are actual children, and we are watching them experience things in their lives. It was important to Bess that we cast children who feel very believable, very real. It’s tremendously exciting. It’s not something I’ve seen anyone else do before.”
Besides getting Williamson to be dramaturg for “Make Believe,” Wohl always wanted Gay as the play’s director. Wohl and Gay were classmates at the Yale School of Drama in the early ’00s. Wohl was in the acting program but just starting to write, and Gay was in the directing program but was acting regularly in shows at the student-run Yale Cabaret. Gay, now an acclaimed off-Broadway and regional theater director, was one of the stars of the first play Wohl wrote: the prankish comedy “Cats Talk Back.”
Hartford Stage Artistic Director Darko Tresnjak, Wohl says, “has been a huge fan of Jackson’s for years, and has been wanting to find the right project for her at Hartford Stage.” The big issue was finding time in both Wohl and Gay’s schedules. Originally intended to be part of Hartford Stage’s 2017-18 season, “Make Believe” was moved to the 2018-19 season due to scheduling difficulties.
Connecticut audiences got to see a Wohl play last year anyway, when the national tour of her off Broadway hit “Small Mouth Sounds” was at New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre. The play is set at a spiritual retreat where everyone is observing a vow of silence.
In “Small Mouth Sounds,” Wohl says, “the experiment was how much silence the play could handle. With this, it’s similar: How much of the children? Both plays came from the same impulse — something that seems impossible.”
“Make Believe” opens the Hartford Stage season with an experimental bang, and the sound of children playing.
“We’re figuring it out as we go,” Wohl says. “We don’t know what people will make of it. Nobody’s seen it before; there were no audiences at the workshops.”
“Kids are onstage for 45 minutes, and not in a children’s theater play,” Gay adds.
“Its a great opportunity to be able to do all this on such a large canvas,” Wohl says, “with so many people supporting it.”
MAKE BELIEVE, recommended for people at least 18 years old, runs through Sept. 30 at Hartford Stage, 50 Church St., Hartford. Performances are Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m., with a Wednesday matinee at 2 p.m. on Sept. 26, Saturday matinees at 2 p.m. on Sept 15 and 29, and Sunday evening performances Sept. 9 and 23 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $90. 860-527-5151, hartfordstage.org.
