Friday, January 31, 1986 15 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS FO6EINAN'S WASHER C7 DRYER REPAIR SERVICE Plumbing Service Available WE EXPERTLY INSTALL SPACE SAVER APPUANCES • fully experienced in washer and dryer repair • all work guaranteed • no hourly charge, just a $25 flat rate service call charge now to a thought which kept popping up in her mind. "I'm great,' I would think. `I have really discovered something, and things are going to be wonderful." Fade to reality. After several unsuccessful attempts to secure an agent in New York, Dubin, dis- couraged, bewildered, and a little embarras- sed that she'd even entertained such thoughts in the first place, came to the conclusion that she had been wholly unrealistic in seeing herself as a successful playwright. Reunion was never produced. What followed was an "intermission" of almost 11 years, during which, Dubin says, she never wrote a play, a fragment of a play, or even a single line of dialogue. She did, however, go back to teaching, gave.birth,tol son Nicolas, left teaching, went ack to scho ), and eventually became a prac- ticing psychologist. (She still has a small tieing practice out of offices in Birmingham.) There was, however, always the nagging voice inside her head, always asking the nag- ging question: "Why don't you try it again?" Two things came to pass, she says, which helped her to decide that she was going to try again. In 1981, she wrote a short, humorous ar- ticle entitled, "Mothers Are People Too." The article, based on her own and other young mothers' attempts to establish their identity apart from motherhood, sold — the first time out — to Family Circle magazine. Two others, written shortly afterwards — one about women's difficulty in communicating with men, and another, entitled, "Is There i Inti- macy After Parenthood?" — also sold to na- tional magazines quickly. "That was really encouraging to me," she says. But, as encouraging as the acceptances were and as satisfying as seeing her by-line national magazines proved to be, Dubin's motivation for returning to playwriting also came from another direction. "I was heading towards 40," she says. "I kept thinking, `Are you going.tn do this? Or are you just going to sit around for the rest of your life and be afraid?' So, I decided, "I'll do it.' " In an upstairs home office, after Nicholas had left for school each day, Dubin began, tentatively at first, to put together a play about people in therapy titled, Time's Up. After several stops, starts, a lot of what she calls "unqualified" advice, and seven major rewrites, Dubin finally acquired a staged reading of it at Detroit's Fourth Street Playhouse in 1983. Afterwards, however, no one came for- ward to express an interest in making the play into a full production. Enter Danny Simon, a highly-respected teacher of comedy writing (and brother of Neil Simon), who happened to be teaching a series of classes in Ann Arbor shortly after Dubin had completed Time's Up. Dubin; who had not taken any playwriting classes since her days at Wayne State, signed up for the two week-end seminars with Simon. She found them, she says, "enormously helpful." "I had been checking out every book I couldfind on playwriting," she says. "But they weren't really helpful to me. Reading them just made me more aware of all the pit- falls and more worried about doing the wrong things — until I couldn't do anything. "On the other hand, the class with Simon helped in that it confirnied to me what I was doing right. Simon was a very good lecturer. We'd analyze different movies and plays, like The Odd Couple, Romantic Comedy. He'd encourage me to follow my characters, to let them take over, and, in a sense, do the writ- ing, speak for themselves. He also helped me a lot with structure, which had always been one of my biggest problems; he helped me to organize (what I wrote)." Two days after the classes ended, she began work on Mirrors. For five months she worked to get a first draft of the play, which focussed on two women — one, a disillusioned housewife and mother, the other, an out-of-work talk-show host — who have come to a kind of crossroads in their lives. 4ipproaching mid-life, they meet at the symbolic crossroads (a Holiday Inn, as it happens) and offer each other a new, different, and sometimes comical look at themselves. "When I wrote Cookies, I really didn't give it much thought," Dubin says. "I know that sounds unbelievable, but I really didn't. Mirrors, on the other hand, got: a lot more thought ahead of time. Images would come into mind. I'd write notes to myself. On the top of a page, I'd write the name of a char- acter, then I'd just write things down about that character — what she'd say, what she might hear. At the end of a week, I'd have built up a character — although both of my (main) characters changed a lot from, when I started out. "The play changed, too. But that was all • right. I let it evolve. "Basically, I'd write a draft, then show my work to a few key people," she says. One of the "key people" reading the play-in-progressiiwas Walter Mark Hill, assis- tant to the director of the Center for Arts at Oakland University, who had earlier directed the reading of Time's Up at the Fourth Street Playhouse. Shortly after Dubin finished the play, Hill arranged a staged reading at /Oak- land University. - "I feel, in order to see how a play is, it must be read," says Dubin. "You have to find out if the funny parts are funny, if the poig- nant parts are poignant, if the play works. "We sent out announcements of the read- ing. There was no publicity in the newspap- ers or anything like that. We wanted about 100-150 people — to see how an audience would react. That was one purpose of the reading. The other purpose? "I was hoping one of the area theatre di- rectors would see it and say, 'This is a good play — I'd consider including it in my sea- son.' " at the Kent Martin, artistic • otre lterest in State Fair Theatre, expressed A doing exactly that. Now, several months later — after sitting in on auditions, attending several rehearsals, and cpnferring with direc- tor Hill now and then when problems arose — Dubin finds herself excitedly awaiti g opening night. She's trying, she says, not to get overly- excited and, in an effort to keep her nerves in check, she startedwork on a new play. And she reads a lot. "I absolutely hate reading plays," she says. "But I like biographies. I like reading about people who have developed and created themselvps. I like to read about someone who keeps growing and changing — somebody who's taking risks." 0 399-4098 Handyman Service Available Suppliii • • • DELUXE GAS LIFT CHAIRS 1,000 PAPER CLIPS.— 990 664 1/41b. Rubber Bands 990 Swingline Staples 100 File Folders $ 4.99 File Folder Labels $ 1.49 Hanging Files w/tab.... $ 6.00 r r $ 57 WE RENT, REPAIR AND SELL ALL MAKES OF OFFICE AND BUSINESS MACHINES Everything for your office! 16893 Schaefer Hwy. at Six Mile 342-7800 e clean Weep Sale! Save ••• T o i ) 70% • Dinnerware • Flatware • Table Linens • Stemware • Giftware e Fashions For The Home 2 0000 West 10 Mlle at Evergreen ft 356-4600 You Won't Forget Her.... M-F 10-9; Sat. 10-5:45 Sun. 10-5 brute m. weiss One of o Kind Custom Designed Jewelry (313) 353-1424 26325 Twelve Mile Rd. Southfield, Michigan e8034 In the Mayfair Shops — Southeast Corner At Northwestern Hwy. This time, 'make an impression 40% off our entire collection* Sale excludes special orders, loose stones, watches Ft labor charges.