Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan is gearing up to debut his latest production, “Bob & Jean: A Love Story,” at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, starting May 27. This intriguing piece draws from a collection of letters his parents — Bob, a pioneer in public radio and television, and Jean, a USO actress — wrote to each other during World War II, offering a raw and authentic glimpse into their relationship.
Schenkkan talked with James Lane Post about what it was like to read his parents’ letters for the first time, creating a dramatic piece from the pieces, and life in Sag Harbor.
So tell me about finding your parents’ letters and what that was like for you.
Well, they were always a presence in the house. There was no secret about them. They were in these cardboard boxes up in the attic, and as a boy in Central Texas, I was exploring the attic. They weren’t particularly interesting to me as a child, not nearly so much as my father’s hand grenades, which were lying around the house, and the brass shell cartridge from a Mark 5, the naval gun, that was an umbrella stand by the front door. There were lots of interesting things in the house, but the letters — not so much.
But by the time my father had passed, which was about 12 years ago, I had become the kind of de facto genealogist historian of the family. And so, I wound up with all my parents’ and grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ documents and pictures, including the letters. And so by that time, I’m now a parent, grown children of my own, and thinking more about my parents and my family and how it affected me.
And we’re living in Sag Harbor by that time. It’s Covid, so we’re in isolation. Every day I’m walking on the beach, on Long Beach, to clear my head and picking up scallop shells, and thinking about my dad, who used to walk the beach on Vanuatu and collect seashells that he sent to my mother, and those were the seashells that were in my childhood home. So I pulled the boxes down, and I pulled the letters out, and I started to read them. And I had realized that what I really needed to do first was transcribe them. They’re handwritten for the most part, beautifully written, I must say. My own handwriting I can’t read, but theirs is elegant.
And so not only transcribe, but put them in order, because the mail system was so chaotic during the war that nothing arrived in order. You might write a letter and have a really important question, and then not receive an answer for three months, but get five other letters in between talking about other things.
I never thought about that. Of course, they wouldn’t be necessarily chronological, would they? That’s amazing.
I really had to put them in order, and that’s when the story fully emerged, that first time where I had them all in order, and I could now read the conversation that they were having. That was extraordinary. I was very, very moved and very surprised. By that time, I’m up there in years, let’s say, but I’m reading these letters from my mother and my dad. My mother is 22 and my dad is 25, and they’re unburdened by family and children. Here, their lives are in front of them, and they have all these hopes and dreams, and they’re struggling in so many ways with their families and what’s happening in the world.
To begin with, it was in my mind that there might be a story here that would be interesting to a wider audience.
What was the hammer that hit you on the head, where it became something more than just love letters, and became a play?
Well, the story has a real arc, a beginning, a middle, an end. There’s plenty of drama in it, plenty of conflict in it. I know how it ends, but the ending doesn’t feel like it was given. It doesn’t feel like it was always going to wind up this way. So it has all the elements that you want in a good story.
And I also thought, and this is really important: the message, if you will, the heart of this story, was perfectly in tune with our times. That’s really important to me when I sit down and decide to devote myself to writing a play or a movie or a television thing is, why this story now? Why does this matter? And I felt it did.
That’s beautiful. So both of your parents were really involved in the arts. Your dad was in NPR, communications, public radio, and your mom was a USO actress. I don’t know what she did after she came back. I imagine raising four — was it four boys in your family?
Four boys.
Yeah. That was probably enough. That’s enough of a resume.
She was plenty busy, but they were both very, very civic-minded and very involved in their community in every possible way, from being on the PTA boards and doing volunteer work. My father, as you point out, was a pioneer in public television and radio, creating the first public television radio station in really the Southwest, and helping President Johnson’s team write the bill that eventually becomes the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
And I know that you wrote “All the Way,” about LBJ, of course. I must say that’s your work that sticks with me. The HBO movie with Bryan Cranston.
Yeah, HBO. And Steven Spielberg produced it.
So did you get to meet LBJ when your father was doing that work?
We did, although I have no memory of this. But when I started work on the LBJ plays, because there are two plays, I asked my oldest brother if he remembered going out to the ranch, and he said, “Yes, I did. But it’s interesting. I don’t really remember LBJ.” He said, “What I remember distinctly is how incredibly respectful our father became around this man.” What he really felt was the power dynamic, which is kind of an interesting thing. So, yes, and my dad would go on to be credited by many people, including Bill Moyers, with saving PBS in ’71 when Nixon tried to gut NPR and NEA. Familiar story.
So were your parents still alive to witness your success?
Well, both parents were alive to see my first full-length play professionally produced. That was a play now titled “Final Passages,” which was produced in New York, in Buffalo, actually, at the theater there, which sadly no longer exists. So it was my first play, I got an agent, I was made a member of New Dramatists, and I was pretty much off to the races. The play was also optioned for Broadway. That didn’t happen.
But she died shortly after that, far too young, kind of tragic circumstances. So she was not present for “The Kentucky Cycle,” and the Pulitzer, and “All the Way.” My dad was. But they were both very, very proud of what I had accomplished. I should say, they made a point of never pushing any of us into the arts and into theater. My father was a playwright and an actor, and as I said, Jean was a professional actress, and so they knew how hard it was, and they didn’t feel like anybody, any child, needed to be thrust into that world. But once it became clear that I, and I’m the only one of the four who did, had my heart set on it, then they were very, very supportive. Couldn’t have been more.
Was it difficult to edit your parents’ words? Because that sounds borderline guilt-inducing, and/or therapeutic.
A little Freudian, maybe. It was not difficult, but it was challenging. The rules of the game, as I established them for myself, were as much as possible, when they are speaking, to simply use their own words, although I would allow myself to edit and rearrange the text as necessary. Because, as I started off saying, everything is out of order, everything was jumbled.
In sequences, and there are a couple of sequences on stage where the narrator, who is a stand-in for myself, questions or interrogates Bob and Jean, or vice versa, I allowed myself a little bit more leeway, although always trying to adhere as closely to what they had actually said. It was very, very illuminating. It was a very positive experience to try to imagine myself in my parents’ minds and hearts and capture their voice and their journey. So it was not painful in that sense, although rehearsals were quite emotional for me, in a way that they are not usually.
That’s lovely. Tell me a little about living on the East End and your relationship with the Bay Street Theater.
Well, my home is Sag Harbor. I’ve lived in New York since I was 19, since I was 24, I guess, or kept a place here. I was on the West Coast for a long time and then moved back to New York when I did “All the Way” on Broadway with Bryan Cranston, and sold my house, which was then in Seattle, and met my now wife, Deborah, a.k.a., the Greek goddess.
But I wanted a house outside of New York. I couldn’t just live in New York City, 24/7/365. I didn’t really know the South Fork that well. Deborah knew it quite well. And the minute I set foot in Sag Harbor, I just relaxed, and it just felt like home. And we saw this house and made a bid on it immediately, and I’ve been there ever since.
So it’s my hometown, and Bay Street is my hometown theater. It is my theater. I attend regularly. I support it in whatever ways that I can. And I think of both Tracy and Scott, the co-artistic directors, not just as professional colleagues, but as friends. And so I’m very, very invested in the theater, very proud of it.
And if there’s a message in “Bob & Jean,” what is it?
It’s the thing that I touched on ever so briefly earlier in our conversation, about why this play now. In 1943, when my parents fell in love, it was a really dark time. We look back now and we think, oh, of course, the good guys won. But that is not at all what it felt like then. And so for them to, despite that, despite the uncertainty, the darkness and the uncertainty about the future of the world, for them to make this decision to, yes, to love, and to commit to each other, and to have a family, I think is a really wonderfully hopeful action. They bet on hope.
And I think right now we are experiencing a similar time, a very profound confusion and darkness, where things seem quite uncertain. And I think for an audience right now, a story like this about people in a complicated world who choose love, who choose hope, will be just the ticket.
“Bob and Jean: A Love Story” runs at Bay Street Theater from May 27 to June 15. For more information, visit baystreet.org.
