Interview of Daniel McNeill, playwright of The Body Is A Legal Drug, a full-length play in the Midtown Festival
1.
What was the inspiration for this production?
An unemployed friend of mine who is straight went to Provincetown on Cape Cod to visit his former wife. He told me he went for a drink at a bar and a man sitting next to him asked in a friendly, gentle voice, “Did anyone ever tell you you look like Rory Calhoun?” My friend visited his ex- wife and found she was in a relationship with a woman. Knowing Provincetown has a reputation of being gay and lesbian friendly, I began to think that the recent legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts might make an exciting play if I put the male partners in such a marriage together with 6 people with various life-styles on a summer’s day in a condo in Provincetown. I ended up with two men recently married, one a famous writer previously married to 4 women; the mother of one of the men; an unmarried pregnant woman and her unemployed ex-husband; a lesbian business woman; and a Miami Beach gangster with his girlfriend. I had the ingredients for a delicious dramatic soup. I put them in a pot, added water and brought the mixture to a boil.
2.
What's your creative process like?
I get a general idea for a play but I don’t outline it in advance and I don’t force myself to aim only at some predetermined objective. I put people together and start them talking and get ideas about the direction a play should take from the path it starts on naturally and spontaneously. When I had already written most of this play,The Body Is A Legal Drug, I had no idea that the last scenes in it would ever come into being and then suddenly they flashed to life in my brain and heart. I wrote them quickly as though some power within me was telling me what to write. Inspiration is real and a predetermined objective alone will never make a real play. I love to write a play that at some point begins writing itself and magically speaks the words necessary to take the actors and an audience to some place completely unexpected and exciting.
3.
What makes you different from other playwrights?
I love to start a play from some crazy or impossible situation that seems unable to be developed into a full-length play. For example, in my play, Rising In Love, a young man and woman reveal in the first scene that they are “risers”, that is, that when they fall in love with someone it makes them so excited that they rise about 10 feet in the air and hang there. This could easily become a short comical skit but amazingly (sorry to congratulate myself!) I developed it into a full-length play. In another of my plays, After The Miracle, in the first scene a miracle takes place and I develop the action related to it that follows to three full acts. In the miracle plays of Medieval Europe, the miracle always happens at the end of a play. In my miracle play, the miracle happens at the beginning. I love to start with a situation that doesn’t seem like it can develop meaningfully and develop it meaningfully.
4.
What makes this production special?
Only a director who sincerely loves the difficulty and the challenge of putting 8 actors together on a stage and creating a good show, or even a great show, could have staged this play. How can 8 people changing their relationships with one another come together for a few hours on a summer’s day in a condo in Provincetown in some meaningful dramatic unity? Albert Baker, the director, and the 8 talented actors he found make The Body Is A Legal Drug special.
5.
How is your cast unique?
We do not always have to face in the present the consequences of having loved someone in the past. But every actor in this cast before us on stage is affected in the present by having loved someone they were with in their past. That makes our cast unique.
6.
What did you learn about yourself through this process?
The greatest discovery in my life is that personhood, what makes us a distinct person, does not come from ourselves. It comes from God. But God allows us the freedom to try to create an identity for ourselves separate from him. We are all involved in the comedy/tragedy of using our ego and our reason to create ourselves in some form that must ultimately prove inauthentic, no matter how authentic we seem, because we have already been created with our true personal authenticity by a mysterious, hidden being who will not abandon us unless we abandon him. I learned in writing this and other plays why Dante named his great poem The Divine Comedy. I learned that as long as people live inauthentically, their invented identities can become authentic roles for actors in theatrical comedies.
7.
How does it feel to be a part of this festival?
I live in Essex County on the North Shore near Boston. Every time I come to New York and interact with theater people, I become inspired by the great possibilities of live theater. Unfortunately in Boston the theatrical atmosphere seems in comparison with New York dour and even puritanical. I am a theatrically repressed Bostonian who is thrilled to have a full-length play in the Midtown Festival.
8.
What are your goals for the production?
I want Albert Baker and his talented cast to have an enjoyable creative experience. I want every theater-goer in New York to come to my play on a summer’s afternoon or evening beginning July 18 and let themselves be imaginatively transported to Provincetown on Cape Cod where 8 actors will make them laugh or otherwise move them bringing to life the odd creation of my fancy. I want my play to be reviewed by theater critics to discover where they think it ranks compared to other plays currently offered in New York.
9.
Who do you think will enjoy it the most?
Anyone who is unemployed and without money, anyone unmarried and pregnant, any gangster, any gangster’s girlfriend, anyone straight, lesbian or gay, anyone contemplating or in a same-sex marriage, any born-again Christian, any old woman who once had a one-night stand - all of these will enjoy the play. But I think people who are free in their soul of any and all identities based on exterior circumstances and human egotism will enjoy it most.
10.
What's next?
I have 3 full-length plays locked up in my computer ready to escape to a stage. I have ideas for 4 plays and I’m working now adapting Nathaniel Hawthorne’s great novel, The Marble Fawn, to a stage play.
Daniel McNeill’s play,The Body Is A Legal Drug, will have 7 performances during the Midtown International Theater Festival in New York in July and August at the Davenport Theatre 354 West 45th Street. 212-956-0948.
Performances: July 18 2:30 pm. July 20 6:30 pm. July 24 6:30 pm. July 26 7:00 pm. July 28 8:30 pm. July 31 8:00 pm. August 2 3:30 pm.
