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Photo Ann Wood
Playwright Jerry Thompson takes a theatrical look back at the Provincetown of the '60s and '70s. |
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Some things never change
Thompson play looks back 40 years
By Ann Wood & Kaimi Rose Lum
Banner Staff
When Jerry Thompson served Tennessee Williams a drink at the A-House more than 40 years ago, he had no way of knowing that he, too, would become a produced playwright in Provincetown. After all, he and his friends were penniless, jobless, homeless vagabonds who lived in their cars until they found work.
“There was no place to park,” Thompson says. “Or [we'd sleep] on the beach if the bugs weren't biting.”
It was in the Old Colony Tap that these guys found jobs, a place to live. One fellow found a wife there. Thompson found inspiration there.
“That's the one place in town that hasn't changed an iota,” he says.
Bits and pieces of these experiences have found their way into Thompson's 10-minute play, “John Under the Lobster Pot,” which is set inside the Old Colony Tap. This newly penned work will show in the Provincetown Theatre Company Spring Playwrights' Festival production of “Short Plays,” which also includes “Awake” by Meryl Cohn, “Child Support” by Joseph Godfrey, “Double D” by Jim Dalglish, “Get in the Car” by Andrea Lepcio, “Paradise Reserved” by Kelly DuMar and “The Taxidermist's Balloon” by Jillian Weise. The performance starts at 7:30 p.m. and runs Thursday through Sunday at The Provincetown Theater, 238 Bradford St., Provincetown. Tickets are $16, $14 for PTC members, students and seniors. Call (508) 487-9793 or go online to ptowntix.com.
Thompson grew up in Branford, Conn., and attended South Connecticut State College until he was sent out to student teach. He didn't want to do it, so he quit instead. Thompson then moved on to Columbia University and graduated from there with a degree in comparative literature. He came to Provincetown on a lark and says he'd never been to a place like it - had never seen anything like it before. There were fire hydrants spraying water, jazz music blasting from storefronts, portrait artists painting portraits, dancers dancing on the stoops.
“People weren't settled like they were in Connecticut,” he says. “It just represented a different life. … So I was driving [back] home and I thought, 'What the hell am I doing this for? This is crazy.'”
He decided to stay and scored a job at the A-House. For the last 30 years he's been making his living as a builder and has called Truro home since 1972. He has been penning plays for the last eight years, about seven of which were produced by Provincetown Theatre Company, and he credits its Playwrights' Lab as contributing to his success.
The play “John Under the Lobster Pot” came out of a conversation he had with a couple of other playwrights from the PTC lab over lunch at the Lobster Pot. He told the tale of this guy John, a waiter there, who really did sleep under the restaurant and would run into the Old Colony during work to down a drink. The others commented that he had a play right there.
The play opens with Angie waiting tables at the Old Colony. In walks her husband, Dogfish, who hasn't gone bass fishing in a week because his boat is being repaired. She's mad he won't get another job and she's stressed about money - but the story takes a turn when she realizes things are harder for new wash-ashores. John is this young adult who has been living under the Lobster Pot since he realized he couldn't afford to keep his car, in which he'd been living, in the town lot on his dishwasher's pay. This leads to tickets, the loss of his job, and perhaps the loss of his car as well.
The dialogue in “John Under the Lobster Pot” is funny and poignant - and it has some hilarious off-stage action to boot.
“[Writing dialogue is] probably what I'm best at. I tried writing fiction years ago but it wasn't working for me,” Thompson says. When he got sick and was laid up in bed for a couple weeks, out came the pen and out came his first play.
“I guess what got me going is I always liked Shakespeare,” he says, and includes American playwrights Eugene O'Neil, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller among his favorites.
Although it's called a 10-minute play, Thompson admits that “John Under the Lobster Pot” is longer than that. He says short plays present the playwright with the challenge of creating characters, relationships, a storyline, conflict and resolution in very few pages.
“The short plays are really fun. … I think of them as more than an exercise. They're legitimate,” he says. “The great part [of playwriting] to me, probably what I like most, the whole idea of writing and producing a play, is the collaborative part.”
Guy Wolf directs the production which includes Andy Reynolds as J.L., Paul Patrick Murphy as Dogfish, Susan Grilli as Angie and Jason Matson as John.
Thompson says that he goes to rehearsals but keeps his mouth shut.
“I don't have anything to do with it anymore,” he says, and adds laughing, “My work's done except helping build the sets.”
And anyhow, it's impossible to know whether the play works or not until it's staged, Thompson says.
“I'm sure they're doing a good job with it. Of course, with the audience, that's when you find out,” he says.
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In the Arts
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May 12th, 2005