Welcome to the World of Michael Weller

The magic and power of Michael Weller’s plays is in how alive, passionate, and well defined his characters are. If you are familiar with his plays: MOONCHILDREN, LOOSE ENDS, SPOILS OF WAR, WHAT THE NIGHT IS FOR, etc…then you know what I am talking about. Weller writes actor/character driven plays. He creates attractive, likable, and volatile characters. Weller’s plays dig deeply into the complexities of human relationships…they are brutally honest and firmly planted in present day attitudes and concerns. His work is funny and intense…psychologically compelling and emotionally involving. This kind of drama is “red meat” for actors offering them a fierce vehicle for physicality, naked honesty and emotional connection. As a director I really respond to his aggressive style.

I recently learned that FIFTY WORDS is the second play in a trilogy that Michael is writing. WHAT THE NIGHT IS FOR is the first play in the trilogy. Joyce Ketay, Michael’s agent sent me an early draft of WHAT THE NIGHT IS FOR a few years ago and I liked it very much, but I wasn’t able to include it in our repertory. I often have to pass on terrific scripts because of our rotating repertory constraints. WHAT THE NIGHT IS FOR is published and I recommend reading it. I just read a draft of the third play in the trilogy currently titled SIDE EFFECTS ZERO…which just received a reading in New York.  The trilogy is an incisive closeup of the emotional battleground of contemporary relationships.

FIFTY WORDS is a bruising and funny play about the back and forth of power games, recriminations, seemingly innocent putdowns and brutally honest confessions of a 21st century marriage. What is it about marriage that makes it sometimes so terrifying?  Is it the unparalleled power it lends it’s participants to wound, maim and annihilate, through the grim weapon of knowing exactly where the other person hurts?  Welcome to the world of Michael Weller…a bold and productive playwright who specializes in family portraits. In FIFTY WORDS… love hurts…and it isn’t necessarily pretty…but Adam (the husband) and Jan (the wife) do share an inextinguishable love and desire for each other.

“You have this magical idea about family, like it’s this eternal Disney World where everyone’s smiling and warm and available 24 seven,” Jan says. “It’s twisted, Adam.”

Most audiences with any experience of cohabitation will recognize themselves in this emotional battleground of contemporary relationships.

—Ed Herendeen