The Wright Stuff
The Welders: The Birth of a Suicide Play
“I have a wacky curiosity with suicide cults and group suicide,” playwright Bob Bartlett admits. Bartlett’s play happiness (and other reasons to die), is the third to come out of the playwright’s collective called The Welders, and runs at the Atlas Performing Arts Center from May 27 through June 13th. As with the two playwrights who preceded him in the Welder’s process of play development and production, Bartlett will take the reins as the company's Artistic Director as he explores his curiosity for collective suicide in what he calls an “unlikely comedy.”
happiness is not new to Bartlett. It’s a play that he’s been writing on and off for almost a decade. Intrigued by mass suicides in Jonestown, Guyana and by the Heaven’s Gate cult in San Diego, he became interested in the more recent suicide pacts that followed the economic crash less than a decade ago. He has long wanted to explore what leads people to end their lives in this way. “We get so little time on this earth,” he said, “so it’s difficult for me to comprehend what happens in us that brings us to a place where we’ll give that up without one hell of a fight.”
With the upcoming production, Bartlett’s’s able to explore this gnawing question in a new, deeper, and richer way thanks to a dream production team. Directing the play is Gregg Henry, the Artistic Director of the Kennedy Center’s American College Theatre Festival, of whom Bartlett says, “There’s hardly anyone in this area stronger at working with new plays.” Henry’s influence on the piece has led to big changes, including the setting - Duluth, Minnesota in the winter. Bartlett notes that the change “sent me in all kinds of fun directions, from investigations of the life and music of Bob Dylan to the history of happiness, what makes us happy and why, and what makes us sad enough to completely lose all hope.”
The happiness team also features D.W. Gregory as dramaturg. A playwright herself, Gregory is, according to Bartlett, “especially strong at considering the impact of storytelling on an audience.” The balance of comedy and seriousness is one of the challenges this production brings. While a comedy, the play touches on issues at the forefront of difficult conversations at a time, as Bartlett notes, “when the country is working especially hard to confront and prevent suicide - the most preventable cause of death - end-of-life issues, and our right to die.”
As the current Artistic Director, Bartlett is given the artistic freedom to create exactly the show he wants. He made sure to note his other collaborators: Collin Ranney (scenic), Johnathan Alexander (lighting), Gail Beach (costumes), and Kenny Neal (sound), along with the management team of Rich Ching (production manager), Tre’ Wheeler (stage manager), and Sam Macher (assistant stage manager). All have had a huge impact on the script and process. Though Bartlett may be both playwright and Artistic Director, thanks to his team and his Welder peers he’s never alone.
“During the times I need to be ‘playwright Bob,’” he explains, “someone else steps up and takes leadership on whatever needs to be done.” This includes the company’s interesting new fundraiser campaign where you can buy into the Welders Community Supported Art and get juicy bits from the rehearsal room and other added benefits. If the play is about people deciding to die together, The Welders demonstrate just the opposite – showing how people come together to create something new, and in a most vital way.
happiness (and other reasons to die) runs at the Atlas Performing Arts Center from May 27 through June 13th
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