INTERVIEW: New off-Broadway play explains why breaking up is so hard to do
Happy Valentine’s Day to all fans of off-Broadway. Playwright Matthew McLachlan and director Joshua Warr are ready to take audiences down the road of tough relationship breakups in the new play Orion, presented by Ruddy Productions at Theatre Row’s Studio Theatre.
The play follows Sam and Gwen as they navigate a difficult split and try to figure out their new identities as their relationship crumbles apart. The production stars Amanda Jones, Blake Merriman, Simone Serra and Scott Brieden. Performances run Feb. 14 to March 4.
McLachlan said the project began when he was taking acting lessons, and he discovered that the world of playwrighting might be an equally good fit. “I loved acting more than anything, but I started to discover that I love playwrighting,” McLachlan said recently in a phone interview. “One of the first exercises we had was just make two characters talk and go live through what you’re going through at the time. Every sad sack of a 20-year-old goes through a breakup at one point, so that was kind of what I was going through. I thought, this is what I’m living through. It’s my truth, and they’re like, that’s what this is for. Just kind of put what’s true to you right now on the page. I kind of did, and it became this really rough version of this very first scene of this play.”
Eventually McLachlan became the resident playwright of Ruddy Productions and expanded the scene into a full-length piece. “It just turned into bigger than me,” he said. “It wasn’t just about my broken heart and eating too much pizza on the couch. It became relating to everyone. It started with just an exercise, and this play actually helped me discover I wanted to be a playwright in the first place.”
Warr has worked with McLachlan over the course of the last two-and-a-half years. He first encountered McLachlan’s words in a festival of new works at Ruddy, and as soon he read the writing, Warr was hooked.
“For two consecutive years they basically produced unknown, emerging, new writers and their work, and Matthew was one of them,” Warr said. “I directed a short of his called Men’s Monthly, and it was such a great time that Matthew and I kept working together. And we worked on a reading of one of his first major full lengths called Coyote last year, and I think it was then that we all kind of just said, I think that Matthew is ready to have a full-length produced. And I feel like Ruddy is ready to produce it, and I want to direct it.”
The piece was workshopped on Monday evenings at Ruddy Productions, and the sessions proved to be a time for both the director and writer to work on the piece and their own crafts. “It just became very clear to me that I had to direct it,” Warr said. “I needed to direct this. I went through a nasty breakup, and I knew what these people were going through. I knew what the friends were going through in the play. It all made sense to me. I heard it in my head. I saw it in my head, and I think I forcefully attached myself to the project. And then everyone else kind of got on board.”
Because of the constant workshopping, McLachlan said he believes today’s play is ready to go. He has been sitting in on rehearsals and appreciated the chance to “trim the fat,” as he put it. His writing style presents a welcome challenge: He sometimes has too much and needs to scale back. That’s probably better than the alternative.
Plus, McLachlan and Warr have a working relationship where their roles can bleed over a bit. “I’d be like, how about this as a suggestion,” McLachlan said. “[Warr] says, how about this as a line, or I want to add this maybe; it may be clearer. So I’m just kind of there to facilitate that.”
When Warr first read that opening scene, the director found it devastating, saying it ripped the heart out of his body and made the hair on his neck stand up. “I just thought, if this is what I’m going through when I’m hearing this, I can’t imagine how many other people can connect to it in such a visceral way,” Warr said. “I think what was going through my head about Sam and Gwen is that unfortunately a lot of us in life go through really sh–ty breakups or experience these people in our lives. We are confident they are the loves of our lives, that we are confident that these people will be in our lives for eternity, that we will have a romantic fairy tale with them and life would be great. It’s going to be terrific in our castles, but sometimes that doesn’t happen. And I am somebody with no filter in life, and I enjoy the aspect that Matthew is really analyzing the nastier part of love, which is when it’s not working out, when it doesn’t work out and when it can’t work out.”
As the playwrighting progressed, McLachlan changed the characters. The first draft presented Sam as right and Gwen as wrong in the relationship, but the writer found that too easy. He didn’t want the audience to root for Sam; he wanted theatergoers to be split down the middle.
“I think of writing as like a piece of music, and it doesn’t matter if two actors look identical,” McLachlan said. “Their instrument is going to sound different. They’re going to do it differently, so the same melody on a piano is going to be different on a guitar. So it’s really good to figure out what is the music that I want, and it was really rough at first. And I think getting different actresses to speak through to Gwen really gave me a different point of view. … I want couples to start fighting as they leave. That’s kind of my goal. I want couples to fight over who they think is right by the end.”
The playwright added: “I think there’s so many people that are quick to throw the word cliché out there for love, for breakups, and I remember my very, very first breakup. It felt like I had a thousand elephants on my chest, and now I think everyone feels like that. I remember my boss at work the next day was like, ‘Get over it.’ He’s been there. He’s done that, but I was like, this is the end of the world for me. But when that happens … you start to kind of reminisce on the great things you had. Forget the petty fights about this and that. You’re kind of left with this layer of soil on your heart. You’ve moved on. You found someone new or a few people since then, but they’re still there. They’re not going away.”
Warr said he hopes that audiences will walk away from the production and have Sam and Gwen’s relationship linger for a bit. He wants couples to realize what they have in front of them. “This play is our generation looking in the mirror, and this play is staring back at us,” Warr said. “I think it would be special for people just to say ‘I love you’ a little bit more and to hold hands a little tighter and to treat each other a little bit more special because you never know when you’re going to lose somebody around you.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Orion, presented by Ruddy Productions, beings performances Feb. 14 at the Studio Theatre at Theatre Row in Midtown Manhattan. Click here for more information and tickets.
