Catherine Trieschmann and Brent Hazelton
If you live in a modest, middle-class neighborhood, Joanne could be your neighbor. She’s 50-something, teaches violin and cares for her live-in father, Milos. He’s an ailing 89 year old who, as a young man, fled his native Prague alone when Adolph Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia. Through luck, courage and fortitude, he found his way to America and citizenship. Now his daughter, faced suddenly with health issues of her own, needs assistance. She’s hired Camila, an uncertified home health provider, to attend to Milos. As part of the deal, she’s given Camila and her husband, Rafa, living space in the basement and use of the back yard. Camila and Rafa are undocumented Mexican immigrants. An elderly next-door neighbor, Patty, suspects unlawful doings and is poised to call the neighborhood association.
That’s the cast and opening situation of One House Over, a bittersweet comedy by Catherine Trieschmann that will have its world premiere Feb. 27 at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater under the direction of the company’s artistic director, Mark Clements. It’s drawn from first-hand accounts and the playwright’s own experience as a live-in nanny. The script grips a reader by the unexpected shifts of perception and action among the members of this awkward, vulnerable community of five; no good guys/bad guys here.
“It’s not a play about immigration where that issue is always front and center,” Trieschmann told me. “I was interested in exploring issues of state in an intimate domestic psychological situation. So yes, we have border crossings, but it’s really a play about how people cross one another’s psychological borders and that’s a metaphor for geographic crossing. That’s what I was looking for in any scene: Whose boundary is getting trespassed here?”
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One House Over is among the first beneficiaries of the Rep’s new John (Jack) D. Lewis New Play Development Program instituted last season to bring worthy plays to the world stage. The program’s director Brent Hazelton, an associate artistic director for the company, directed Trieschmann’s earlier play How The World Began for the Rep’s 2012-13 season. A success in London, New York and beyond, it’s “a play about how people are unable to talk about really polarizing subjects,” Hazelton said. “It felt very much like a conversation we’re having here in the community, by a writer firmly rooted in Midwestern themes and ideas. We spent a little time with Catherine around the opening, which helped us realize that this is a relationship worth nurturing. We didn’t have any real way to do that for a couple years, but once the new play program came on stream she was one of the first writers we commissioned.”
That commission was for a play about Summerfest, now in development for a future Rep premiere. Meanwhile, Trieschmann explained, “I started this play as a passion project and sent it to Brent and said, actually, could we put the commission aside for a minute and do this one? I think honestly what happened is that Trump got elected and the world changed. It wasn’t the time for the Summerfest play.”
“This play just felt a little bit more necessary,” Hazelton agreed.
Last June, Trieschmann, Hazelton, Clements and three of the actors who’ll appear in the premiere took the first draft to a Door County arts festival for a workshop and public reading. “It was the first time I’d heard the play aloud in its entirety,” Trieschmann said. “And then we did another workshop in Milwaukee in October with four of the original cast. Because of those workshops, we started rehearsal really knowing the play. In the first week, I’m sure I’ve rewritten 20 pages but it was about refining. If it hadn’t been for those workshops, we’d still be asking what this thing is.”
“We know the destination now,” Hazelton said. “It’s just figuring out the best way to get there. For me, what makes this play so interesting is that it’s not easy and it doesn’t tell you what to think. It gives you some credit for being an intelligent human being with your own experience to bring to the table.”
A native of Athens, Ga., Trieschmann now lives in a small town in western Kansas. She’s a dissertation away from a theater doctorate and has won many playwriting awards and commissions. Yet she maintains she isn’t sure how one becomes a playwright. “I’m working on it,” she said. “I still have questions.” She agrees that working with the same institution over time is invaluable.
“The work just gets better when artists get to understand the audience they’re trying to have a conversation with,” Hazelton said. “And the audience gets invested, too. We’re Midwesterners. We like to know our neighbors a little more. The more plays by the same writers, the more people get invested in those individual journeys, too.”
Feb. 27-March 25 at Quadracci Powerhouse, 108 E. Wells St. Call 414-224-9490 or visit milwaukeerep.com for tickets and for information on upcoming New Play Development reading workshops, most of which are free and open to the public.
