Playwright Bess Wohl is making her Broadway debut this season with “Grand Horizons,” the story of a couple (Jane Alexander and James Cromwell) who move to a quiet retirement community after 50 years of marriage. After a successful premiere at Williamstown Theatre Festival, the show has made its way uptown to Second Stage Theater.
Wohl’s plays have been produced at theater companies around the country, including Manhattan Theatre Club, Ars Nova, and Geffen Playhouse. Her works include “Small Mouth Sounds,” “Make Believe,” and “Continuity.”
We talked to Wohl about “Grand Horizons,” getting personal in her writing, and how the theater community has helped sustain her career.
“Grand Horizons” is directed by Leigh Silverman. It’s playing through March 1 at Second Stage’s Hayes Theater.
This interview has been edited.
W&H: As a female working in all sides of entertainment, I am first wondering how things have changed for you in the past few years post-#MeToo?
BW: I think there has been a change. Or there is starting to be a change. But I know there is a lot further to go. I was recently made aware that my play is the only original play written by a woman on Broadway this season. Isn’t that bananas? What’s fascinating to me is that no one talks about it. In the past few years, what’s happened more than anything is that I started to see things that I took for granted. I’m ashamed to say I took these things for granted, like the lack of women in the critical establishment and the dominance of white men in all parts of our business. It just felt like the air to me, this is the way things are. I think I’ve had an awakening. Just being in this position as the lonely female playwright with the only original play on Broadway, I realize how much further we have to go.
W&H: Was” Grand Horizons” based on people you knew?
BW: It was a composite of people I knew. My parents are still married after almost 40 years. A few very close friends went through their parents getting divorced at that point in life. It was through talking with friends and thinking about marriage overall. That coincided with me getting married and starting a family. There was this perfect storm in my brain of watching my friends go through their parents’ divorces and thinking what it would it be like to come to that point in life and want to make a change and the beginning of everything in my own experience and what it all meant for me.
W&H: “Grand Horizons” is very much a statement on women’s lives. Both the older and younger female characters question their positions and roles in comparison to the men they are with. How important is it for you to write about women in 2020?
BW: It’s funny because I don’t think I ever approached my writing like that because that’s not where the creative impulse comes from. But I do find myself telling these stories about women over and over in my work. As I become a mother, I’m looking at mothers. It’s another thing people don’t talk about. It’s tough being a mother, and to be writing. The impulse to write about women comes from what I care about, what I’m living, and what I know. Less from a point of I should do this. That’s the stuff that comes after; however, it’s received by the culture which feels outside my ability to control.
W&H: You started your career as an actress before moving into writing. What was that transition like, and do you miss the other side of the business?
BW: I don’t miss auditioning. For me, acting and writing are both about getting inside of characters. Becoming a writer just felt like a natural progression. I wanted to have a more 360-degree view of the story and be able to craft the story myself. I think acting is incredible training for a writer because you get inside characters, literally. You hear plays over and over and begin to understand how they work and what works and what doesn’t. When I started writing plays, I was already in a theater community, so I had a lot of connections with directors that I had worked with who were generous in supporting me to become a writer. Leigh [Silverman] and I first met in a workshop for a play she was developing when I was an actress. Then I wrote one of my very early plays, I immediately sent it to her, and she offered to direct it. It was a natural evolution of telling stories.
W&H: The theater community has so embraced your writing. What are these relationships like, and what do they mean to you?
BW: For a playwright, they are everything. They are the path from going from the page to the stage. They are the gatekeepers; they are the ones who make it happen. “Grand Horizons” was a commission from Second Stage and Williamstown. To have that vote of confidence gave the play a path, knowing people would support it. Second Stage Theater took me from uptown, where they have a smaller space for emerging writers, to their bigger space, the Kaiser Theater on 43rd Street, to now the Helen Hayes. They have done three of my plays in New York, in three different spaces. Just being in conversation with people who are on the receiving end of your work creates the universe where it is possible to do this work at all.
“Grand Horizons”: Joan Marcus
W&H: “Grand Horizons” is a very personal look at marriage and life. How did you get inside each of your characters to express their visceral reactions to the divorce?
BW: I did tour a bunch of assisted living, and independent communities, which is the setting in the play. I spoke to a lot of people about their choices and what it was like to live there. I spoke with one woman who was in her 70s and an expert on sexuality and love later in life. She sent me stuff on working with seniors on intimacy. That was a gift. For the younger characters, I spoke with my friends.
One thing about writing a play is that people start to gravitate towards you who are living this, weirdly. The more I looked for this type of story, [the more] I found them. I also drew on my fears and anxiety about what love and marriage mean.
W&H: I found the connection between the characters Jess, played by Ashley Park and Nancy, played by Jane Alexander, quite profound. Their camaraderie about wanting liberation, expressing their feminism, and need for their own identity. How did you bring these two women, who are so far apart in age, together?
BW: Much of it happened in writing the play, but I’m sure there was a subconscious reason why I wanted a pregnant woman on stage. First of all, I was pregnant when I started this play, so I obviously had those life choices on my plate. Also, looking at the moment in life when it’s too late to turn back and wondering what those are. I think both Jess and Nancy are at the moment in life where you’ve made those choices and can’t turn back. As I wrote the play, a natural alliance formed there.
I also intuitively surrounded Nancy with men in her life. She’s married to a man; she has two sons; she is isolated in terms of her gender at home. So, Jess coming into puncture that and providing a different point of view on life choices — as she wondered about her own life choices and if she would end up like Nancy — felt very rich to me.
W&H: How did Jane Alexander and James Cromwell come into the fold?
BW: They’re both incredible. To have people at the point where they are in their careers willing to take a risk is extraordinary. They’re both legends. The way that they both guided the process with their bravery and deep understanding of their characters was vital. In rehearsals, I looked to them for the feeling and being at this point in life, which they organically brought to the process.
W&H: Lastly, what are you working on next?
BW: I have a movie that I’m hoping to direct this summer, speaking of women in Hollywood. It feels like a dream that has become more possible in the last few years.
I have a new play on the history of feminism called “The Movement.” My mom worked at Ms. Magazine, and I went there a lot as a kid, so I will attempt to write about her and the women I met there.
