NOTES:
I went to see Marvin's Room when I was in New York in 1992 because I had heard about all the awards it had won and because the "word on the street", (i.e., what people were talking about at the TKTS, TKTS, TKTS booth on Broadway) was that it was the show to see if you only had time to see one. I didn't know what the play was about, but I figured with that many people talking about a show, all agreeing how great it was, I wasn't taking too big a risk. Now I wish I could find those people who told me to go see it and thank each of them personally.
I arrived at the theatre in plenty of time to read through the program, (as all good theatre-goers do), and I learned only a little about the play but a great deal about the playwright, Scott McPherson.
Starting with the production of Marvin's Room in Hartford, (which followed its premiere production at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago) and then in New York, Mr. McPherson had been persuaded to include his own notes in the program. He knew he was very ill with AIDS and undoubtedly would die very soon. His lover had just died of AIDS. He had written the play mostly in 1988 before he knew he was infected with HIV. David Petrarca, director of the productions at the Goodman, in Hartford, and in New York, has said, "Oddly, Scotts's life mirrored the play he had written, not the other way around." The notes Mr. McPherson wrote for the program included the following:
Now I am 31 and my lover has AIDS. Our friends have AIDS. And we all take care of each other, the less sick caring for the more sick. At times, an unbelievably harsh fate is transcended by a simple act of love, by caring for another. By most, we are thought of as 'dying'. But as dying becomes a way of life, the meaning of the word blurs.
No one knows how Scott McPherson had a preternatural understanding about care-giving that allowed him to write this play before he had to be the caregiver himself. He did not know that even while he was dying, he would have to take care of others, until one of them died, just as the character Bessie does in this play. What labor did he perform before his ordeal gave him the humanity to write Bessie's lines, "I am so lucky to have been able to love someone so much. I am so lucky to have loved so much. I am so lucky."? These were the lines I remembered from the play, the lines around which the rest of the play revolves for me. I left the theatre in New York knowing that we would have to produce this play at Saint Louis University Theatre as soon as the rights became available. I wanted all of our audience to see this play. I wish everyone in the world could see this play.
John Lamb
Coordinator, Performing Arts Services