鈥淎ll happy families are alike,鈥� Leo Tolstoy famously wrote. 鈥淓ach unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.鈥�
Playwright Dan O'Brien has written of one particular unhappy family and one specific unhappy childhood鈥攈is own鈥攊n The House in Scarsdale: A Memoir for the Stage, directed by Michael Michetti and running through June 4 at The Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena, California.
鈥淚 wanted to explore the mystery of my dysfunctional childhood, the mystery of the dissolution of my family, and do it in an autobiographical and very honest and naked way, in a theatricalized way, but tell a true story,鈥� says O鈥橞rien, whose earlier The Body of an American ran at New York鈥檚 Primary Stages and received the 2014 Horton Foote Prize for Outstanding New American Play.
His new work is 鈥渃lose to docudrama. It鈥檚 been adapted somewhat and fictionalized somewhat, mostly to protect identities, to protect the innocent, to protect the guilty],鈥� he says. 鈥淸Families] are so universally complicated and compelling, and I hope audiences can find a lot to relate to in my story.鈥�
The spark for his initial exploration, he says, occurred about ten years ago, when O鈥橞rien鈥檚 parents and most of his siblings disowned him. 鈥淚 haven鈥檛 seen or spoken to them in ten years. After a few years of recovering from the shock of suddenly no longer having a family, the question was to try to find out why this dissolution occurred.鈥�
Flip through the production photos of the show below:
The play developed out of 鈥渁 few years of me interviewing other estranged relatives, people I hadn鈥檛 seen in sometimes 20 years, and asking them what might have been going on behind the scenes while I was growing up.鈥�
In the play, two actors take on all the roles; one is Dan and the other the interviewed relatives. Rather than a cast of nine, 鈥渋t seemed more theatrically meaningful for this other actor to be a kind of shapeshifter.鈥�
He found small answers, and an understanding of why things evolved the way they did. 鈥淚 discovered a much more well-rounded picture of my parents. I started off in probably a more critical and hurt place in relation to them, and I came to develop a more compassionate perspective just by finding out more details that I didn鈥檛 know, though I knew them for my first 33 years.鈥�
His family, he says, 鈥渉ad so many secrets as well as lies and/or delusions.鈥� Children 鈥渨ho grow up surrounded by lies can feel unconsciously like they鈥檙e not on solid ground as a person. Getting answers with this play has helped me feel a lot more solid about who I am and where I鈥檝e come from.鈥�
