1
"It's about cultural diversity
because the alien has a very hard
time with all the distinctions human
beings make about this race or that
race, this gender or that gender, this
culture or that culture. To the alien,
we look more or less the same.
"The play reminds the audience
that the distinctions that we make
between people are arbitrary. It's not
as if the uni-
verse is ordered
in that way. We
happen to
impose that
order on the
universe."
This will be
the third time
didn't arrive until I had actually fin-
ished it."
Spencer first knew he wanted to
be a playwright in college, when he
spent a term in London and got
caught up in the city's expansive the-
ater scene. After graduating from
Lawrence University in Appleton,
Wis., he worked in the literary
department of the Ensemble Studio
Theatre in
New York.
"I read a
lot of scripts
and learned
about the
business of
production
and playwrit-
ing," Spencer
says. "I
worked with
other plays,
reading them,
seeing them
in production
and figuring out what seemed to
work and what didn't. After five
years, I left to begin my own writing
career, and I've been doing that for
about 10 years."
Spencer started with one-act plays
and moved on to full-length scripts,
putting a bit of himself into each
character.
"I think what I would do in a situa-
tion if I were this other person,"
Spencer says. "In Resident Alien, the
Michael character is a serious snob,
and I can be like that. The alien, on
the other hand, really understands
something, which I hope I under-
stand, about life and humanity, which
ultimately is that life is yourself with
other people, and it's love and com-
panionship that are essential."
Big Deal, Small Price.
Ma
zel Toy! Whatever the occasion - wedding,
Stuart Spencer's "Resident
Alien," a comedy-drama
that won rave reviews at
the Humana Festival of
New American Plays, has
its Midwest premiere at
Jewish Ensemble Theatre.
ci,
Resident Alien
has been pro-
duced. JET
artistic director
Evelyn Orbach
liked it immedi-
ately when she
saw it at the Humana Festival of
New American Plays. She responded
to the humor and the depth beneath.
"It's a satire on hang-ups in soci-
ety," Orbach says. "Jews have been
alien in so many places, and this is a
light-hearted approach to that kind
of experience. It alludes to bigotry,
and it pokes fun."
While the playwright is new to
JET, the cast includes some JET vet-
erans: John Michael Manfredi
( Taking Sides, Unexpected Tenderness
and Torch Song Trilogy), Jim Shanley
(The Last Night of Ballyhoo, The
Diary of Anne Frank and Unexpected
Tenderness) and Scott Screws (The
Last Night of Ballyhoo). The play is
directed by John Siebert.
The setting for Resident Alien is not
unlike the small Wisconsin town in
which the playwright grew up.
"I didn't conceive of the play as a
whole from its inception," explains
Spencer. "The images came out of
the image of a man and his son
walking through the woods at sunset.
The story of what happened to them
in the woods, and all the ensuing
drama and comedy, came to me as I
went along.
"I didn't know where the play was
going as I was writing it, and I didn't
know how it was going to end.
Sometimes, I didn't know who was
going to be in it; characters appeared
without my really planning their
appearance. The plot took certain
twists and turns that were surprising
to me, and the idea for the total play
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Detroit Jewish News
12/4
1998
85