January 21 to February 20, 2011

Shelter Me

Playwright Ensemble member Joel Drake Johnson chatted via email with Literary Manager Aaron Carter about the style, themes and origin of The Boys Room.

Aaron Carter: It seems that your writing defies easy categorization. I know you aren’t particularly fond of “dark comedy.” How do you describe your work?
Joel Drake Johnson: I actually find “dark comedy” acceptable. It’s dramedy that I hate. I imagine that Gomer Pyle might call my plays dramedies.

I think of my plays as plays rather than dramas or comedies. Dark comedy is a superimposed label that I find acceptable mostly because of the word “dark.” I have a less than optimistic view of what people do--but I always feel they are capable of change and the ability to learn how to honestly reflect on their lives. I think dark comedy means that people laugh at things that in real life might not seem so funny.

When watching The Boys Room, we are deeply invested in what seems to be a dramatic moment, and then character will say something that causes everyone to erupt in laughter. Are you surprised by the moments when your work elicits laughter?
I am always surprised at how much laughter my plays generate and it really freaks me out until I stop to think about it and realize that my characters often say some pretty horrifyingly funny things in a very “this is life” kind of way.

In Four Places, the mother’s confession is a long monologue in which she describes the drunken interaction between her and her husband. In every performance, the audience would laugh. The first time they did it, I said to myself: this play is a failure. Then I realized how the horror of what she describes is juxtaposed to the nonchalant way it is written and the casual way it was delivered by Mary Ann Thebus. The juxtaposition made it funny.

I don't intend to write humor. Once the characters' voices take over, I feel like I have no control over what comes out of their "mouths". I think when we look at someone else's pain or misfortune and watch them react and interact during that crisis, it sometimes can’t help but be funny because people go back forth between the mundane and the extraordinary.

Was there a particular experience that led to the creation of The Boys Room?
I was reading about middle aged children who were returning home to live with elderly parents. These middle aged men and women were driven home because of the economy and I thought: I want to write about these people. That’s where Tim, the brother who lost his job, came from.

I also knew of a former classmate whose husband divorced her when she got breast cancer, and I found it horrifying that he did so. But also thought: well, how much does he actually love her? That led to the creation of Ron, the older brother. Ron’s selfish narcissistic behavior is diametrically opposed to Tim’s desperate need for a place to live.

And I wanted to write another play for my friend Mary Ann Thebus. Mary Ann brings such truth to any role she plays--and does so at great risk. There are not a lot of actors who want to go to those dark places that are in all of us. Mary Ann embraces it.

The men in The Boys Room, are trying to balance personal happiness, responsibility, job security and health issues. How do you feel these issues resonate with the current concerns of the culture?
There is an incredible amount of selfish, narcissistic behavior out there in the world – it is behavior that has destroyed the lives of people whose goodness allowed to them to trust others. I think Ron is on the cusp of being one of those selfish, narcissistic people whose behavior makes the world a darker, bleaker world.

I also have discovered that moms and dads don’t necessarily love their children. They might like them. They may tolerate them, but they don’t necessarily love them. There are some parents who may not love their kids but still take the responsibility for raising and caring for them--and there are some parents who just leave. I think that there are more parents than we can ever know who think their life might have been happier and richer without the “burden” of kids.

Are you condemning this selfish behavior, or just trying to figure out why it exists?
Condemning it. I think we know why it exists, don't we? We all have to fight off narcissistic behavior at sometime or another. And we all give into it at times as well because it is often a way of surviving. There are times when I get angry about something or upset and I ask myself if I am feeling this way because a wrong has been done to me or because of some ego thing. It helps me to think of conflicts in that way so I know better what to do about it.

Your work doesn’t tend to focus on a single individual with a clear cut quest that must be accomplished despite growing complications. How do you describe the structure of your plays?
I believe that structure should start with the events of the day. Our daily life is structured around our schedule: work schedule, eating schedule, social schedule, etc. And so is our emotional life. We learn about character through their reactions to and actions within that schedule. We learn even more when something happens that throws that schedule out of whack because then we watch characters as they try to get their old schedule put back into place.

Because it is this kind of dilemma that most interests me, I don’t write plays that I think of as having “an adventure story” structure where the goals and quest are quite clear and often based on very solid evidence and objects. In A Guide for Perplexed, each of the characters were looking for a safe structure they could live in --a day to day kind of security.

In The Boys Room the brothers have violated their schedule by hiding out in their mother’s house. Do they have any hope of getting their old schedule back in place? No. That is why Tim is so despondent. And why Ron chooses to be there. They are hoping their mother can provide a shelter from things they don't want to deal with. A place where they don't have to worry about anything.