Drug addiction is a blight on society. Playwright Garry Michael Kluger puts a human face on the epidemic with his new play, Walking in Space, now playing at Theatre West in Hollywood.
It’s 1972 and Patti, Lori, Kirby and Matthew have a problem; their mother is a drug addict and has been for years. Only now it’s time to do something about it before it ruins all their lives. How the four siblings cope and finally decide to take matters into their owns hands is the locus of Kluger’s involving play, now having its world premiere through Sunday, Oct. 8 (for details, see below).
“This play is so relevant today,” says director Arden Teresa Lewis. “Everyone has had addiction affect their life in some way. This play gives us a chance to look at that and the bigger issues of mental health.
“We have an opioid scourge today because drugs are too easy to get and too common place,” says Lewis, who recalls her parents’ experience with Valium and Xanax.
“This play asks ‘how do you live in a neighborhood for years and be under the influence while raising four kids and nobody knows? As long as the mother, Francine, can function, even barely, no one has to puncture the veneer,” says Lewis.
“I was very moved when I first heard this story of an ordinary, middle-class family at a reading,” adds Lewis. “An addict can be a neighbor, book club member, friend or relative and we need to talk about it.”
This Time It’s Personal
Theatre West
Kluger is the author of 19 plays ranging from comedy, romantic comedy and drama, “but this ‘fictionalized autobiography’ is the one that tells my story and is based on true events,” he says.
“When I was in high school, my mother was a drug addict,” says Kluger “The doctors gave her morphine when my oldest brother was born. After that, there was an endless supply of barbiturates. By the time I was a teenager, we were four kids under the age of 21 with no support.”
Twelve years ago, he started to write his account as a book. But after positive feedback from agents and publishers he was told, “memoirs by men don’t sell unless they’re celebrities.”
A director friend suggested he turn his remembrances into a play.
Making It Playable
In adapting his narrative for the stage, Kluger made some changes. The action’s triggering event was the brothers’ “putting my mother away when I was 16. There was no Betty Ford Center available, so my mother was put in the drug section of a mental institution, the Seton Psychiatric Institute, in Baltimore,” says Kluger. “So to make it playable for the stage I altered certain elements.
In reality it was four boys all under 21; Garry, Jeff and Bruce still at home in high school, with Steve living in New York.
He’s upped the ages and made the siblings two boys and two girls: Patti Silberman, 25, (Mary Elisabeth Somers) who works for a New York Congressman; Kirby Silberman, 23, (Cecil Jennings), starting a hectic career; Matthew Silberman, 20, (Hogan Mason) a college student, and Lori Silberman, 18, (Liv Deneuve) who’s borne the brunt of caring for their mom.
When creating a play, Kluger likes to have “A and B” stories. “Otherwise, the story becomes one note,” he says. His original concept didn’t include the character of Keith Swartz (Andrew Cereghino), “Patti’s on- and off-again boyfriend who the audience knows is perfect for each other.”
Wanting to show that the characters have lives beyond their mother’s illness, Kluger throws in storylineof Kirby’s advertising career and Lori’s college ambitions. “I wanted to broaden there lives and show that they aren’t defined as’ children of a drug addict.'”
Drawing From Real Life
Growing up with an addict mother forever, “my forever,” says Kluger, gave him a lot of material to utilize.
“The day we put her away happened as laid out in the play.” Drawing on memories from 50 years ago and talking with his brothers and mother helped him make sure the dialogue is “almost 100 percent accurate.”
‘’Our mother would wander about the house with no real sense of day or night, and it was not unusual for her to be vacuuming at 2 a.m.,” recalls Kluger. “She tried to change a light bulb at 3 a.m. and fell off the ladder and split her face open. That was impetus to do something. She could have died that night.”
Photo by Garry Michael Kluger
Kluger’s youth included incidents of talking a mother into an ambulance while “large men with a straight jacket” stood at the ready; a friend seeing their mom “frozen” over a cereal bowl and getting pushed away; and rather than putting her to bed, brothers who just put a pillow under her head where she passed out.
“We went to California and she didn’t remember,” says Kluger. “She would say, “I slept that year.”
The brothers developed a “condition green/condition red” code to let each other know if things were stable, “or if I needed to come home for lunch,” says Kluger.
Kluger includes humor in all his plays and Walking in Space is no exception. “We all have a dry wit and wicked sense of humor that I hope comes through. When it all went down, we were looking around the house and someone said, ‘what have we done.’ And we went to the movies. Our coping mechanism was humor.”
“The kids in this play are smart, funny and highly competitive, and that’s how they survive,” says Lewis. “Self-deprecation, zingers and repartee carry them through.”
Learning To Cope
Growing up the boys didn’t have friends over. “I always went to my friend Andy’s house, he never came to mine,” says Kluger. He immersed himself in sports and theatre in high school, “to keep my sanity” and stay until 8 p.m.
“There weren’t a lot of resources back then and when I finished high school and started college, I’d been dealing with it for so long I don’t think any meeting would have helped. I was so over it and I didn’t want to think about drug addiction.”
But when it came to writing the play, he didn’t want to make his mother the villain – “she had a disease.” Her backstory of a miserable childhood and bad breaks make her a sympathetic character.
“I didn’t go into therapy,” says Kluger. “Writing and seeing this show on stage is my therapy. This show is how I dealt with it and it’s for everybody to see.”
Pitching To Direct
Arden Teresa Lewis was eager to direct the production. A 30-year writer (now writer-director) member of Theatre West, she directed Kluger’s first two one-acts for the company. When the organization decided to premiere his A Thorn in the Family Paw in 2016, he turned to her.
“Garry and I had a good collaboration,” recalls Lewis. “We went through the rewriting process and had a good run and good reviews. And we didn’t kill each other.”
When she heard his new show was in development and being workshopped, “I got brave and went up to him and said, ‘I want to direct.’ (She’s even creating the costumes with help from thrift shops, the Buy Nothing app, her sewing skills and donations from friends and family.)
After a staged reading in 2019, “with a great cast, even the person running the lights was crying,” Arden remembers. When she finally had the script in hand, “I just wanted to give Garry a big hug and find his family and hug them too.”
She’s a big fan because, “he writes great women and great matriarchs,” like single, twice-divorced mother Francine Silberman in Walking in Space. Kathy Barnes in the part is breaking my heart. The female part are deep and address current issues, and this play is no exception. Plus the monologues–not extemporaneous but truly meaning something–are kickass.”
“The Kindest Cast”
Kluger sat in on every audition, “but I defer to Arden on the decisions,” says Kluger. One person they both wanted in the cast was Mary Elisabeth Somers, who plays Patti, the older sister. She was part of Kluger’s one-act Death & Cold Cuts, “and I discovered she was Patti.”
We were both enamored of Mary,” adds Lewis. “We used her as an anchor, and she read with every actor.”
With different acting styles and from varying schools, this is a cast that has, “done its homework in creating a family,” says Lewis. “They’re very kind to each other. They’ve even gone on sibling field trips together.”
A Helping Hand
Kluger, who joined the company as a writing member in 2012, enjoys the interplay with actors.
“For some actors this is the first play where the playwright is there at rehearsals,” says Kluger. “I want to be a help and put everybody at ease, so they’re not intimated.”
He sees his job as doing rewrites as necessary, offering notes and sometimes line-reading suggestions.
“I usually give a little speech at the start asking people not to make changes on their own,” says Kluger. “If an actor has something to say, I’ll listen, and nine times out of 10 we resolve it. One actor wanted to change ‘cannot’ to ‘can’t’ in a line. When I explained why I wrote it in a certain way, he understood. Dialogue is like music, there’s a rhythm to it and thank God, most actors are very receptive.”
On Its Feet
After 12 years of work and a successful reading, “I really needed to see this show on its feet and being produced,’ Kluge says. “There is nothing like the opening of a play that you wrote. And I love creating a world and situations and having it play out in front of me.”
“Writing a play, producing a play is putting yourself out there to be critiqued,” says Kluger. But he doesn’t worry about reviews. “My philosophy is that it’s never a good as a rave and never as bad as a pan.”
But this case is a little different for Kluger. “I was seeing things that actually happened and a lot of times in rehearsal I would feel a hand on my shoulder and people asking me if I’m okay. This one’s tougher to watch.”
Adds Lewis, “We want this production to be real, rend hearts, stimulate minds and send people out thinking about it.”
Theatre West is at 3333 Cahuenga Blvd. West. Performances are 8 a.m., Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $35 online, $40 at the door and $30 for students, veterans and members of the military. For more information, call 323-851-7977 or visit TheatreWest.org.
Steve Simmons is an accomplished writer and editor who writes about a wide array of topics including entertainment. His successful experience at The Beverly Hills Courier and other publications set the stage for his blog. Contact Steve at steve.simmons0211@gmail.com or 626-788-6734.
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