Your play, Salem, is based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, "Young Goodman Brown." What was about this material that drew you to it?
The characters, themes, and fantastic circumstances of Hawthorne's entire oeuvre were the impetus for the play, rather than the story itself. His concern with the compromises and rebellions of passionate people trying to live according to codes that they passionately believed in, and the conflicts created by life lived in the shadow of ideals, has always fascinated me. But I chose the story because of one compelling starting point. Concluding "Young Goodman Brown," Hawthorne writes a paragraph that is wonderfully evocative of this dilemma, and to me it has always been the most compelling part of the story. He writes that young Brown, having perhaps dreamed that his whole community attends midnight covenants in the woods, lives his life and dies unhappy. To me, the question was why did he stay with them? How did he continue, knowing or suspecting what he knew about the corruption of everyone around him? What negotiation with himself did he make or discovery about himself did he make, that he could live, father children, and commit to this community, even if it meant lifelong unhappiness? Curiously, I learned years later, when we produced The Scarecrow, that Percy Mackaye was inspired to write his play by the last line of another of Hawthorne's stories, "Feathertop." He emphatically distanced his play from the story, saying his was not an adaptation, but rather a version of the story that pursues the character dilemmas that Hawthorne only alluded to at the end. I was a little . . . humbled to think I had a similar impulse.
You're a long time fan of classic literature. What is it about the classics that resonates with you?
I enjoy the distance of plays, and most literary works, from other periods. To me, the excitement of the theater is creation of new worlds out of the nothing of the empty theater space. Visiting a distant world (in time, style, language) helps us reflect on current concerns with more clarity than recreating contemporary life on stage. As to what makes a play classic—that is, enduring so that we even know about it now—that is a question I can't get into here.
You're the Artistic Director of Metropolitan Playhouse, a theatre company that specializes in exploring American literature and culture. I assume your love of literature ties in with the impetus for forming the company? Tell us a little bit more about that.
First, a couple clarifications for the record. I did not form the company; I took the reins of a successful theater and have continued to keep it alive. And I have no defining love of literature, really. I am fascinated with social and cultural influences that shape our behavior, and as literature records or reveals those from the past, I am interested in it. The more I explore it through American theater, the more I appreciate how we bear the legacy of our past, whether through emulation, rejection, or a sense of obligation.
You're one of several playwrights in Playing With Canons who also leads a double life as an actor. How does one influence the other for you?
I hope my appreciation of play structure, which I grapple with as a writer, helps me act a character with a throughline that supports the overall thrust of the play, insofar as each character bears that responsibility. By the same token, I think my experience on stage as an actor gives me some feel for how lines will play, and ideally write lines that will forward the plot and character development in a satisfying way for the actor and audience.
Even though you've been acting since you were a kid, you've credited your first foray into producing as the thing that really hooked you on theatre. Tell us more about that.
I was first enchanted by theater at my hometown's regional theater, which was founded in a converted firehouse and made moving plays in almost no space merely feet from the audience. It was a community activity that seemed to reach out and pull the audience together with the performers and one another that was unique in my life. Kind of what Hawthorne's communities struggle with. My own first production, in college, was an experience of going out on a limb through improvisation with a gifted actor and friend (Eric Ronis), building a play that meant a lot to us personally (called Goodbye, Walter), and presenting it to friends and strangers as a part of our summer theater. The warm reception, and particularly the fact that people were not only entertained but touched by the production, was the richest experience I had ever had of achieving something like what I had experienced at that regional theater years before. Something that mattered to us, when we inhabited it and acted it out before others, brought us closer to those people and ourselves.
Interview with Alex Roe was conducted by Michael Criscuolo September 2006.