Trailer Smash
Florida Rep premieres Doublewide, a family drama, winning script
Afather invests his meager financial resources into a plot of real estate. A health-care crisis threatens an entire family’s assets. A teenage girl must grow up fast to deal with problems even the well aged within her household can’t contain. The frustrating distance of the American Dream drifts ever further from reach.
Doublewide, a new play by Stephen Spotswood that premiered at the Florida Repertory Theatre in mid April, unfolds like the story of the shattered dreams littering any trailer park in the Sunshine State. Yet Spotswood imagined a different region when he penned the play. “I got the first spark of an idea,” he says, “when I was driving through a stretch of rural Delaware,
and as I have been writing, I kept that specific place in mind. However, I have discovered that when people read this, it’s like a Rorschach test.”
Indeed, when director Maureen Heffernan first read the story, she pictured people she knew growing up in Ohio. When Isabella Cintron, who plays daughter Lorelai, got the script, she saw a similar history to local students she knows from Cypress Lake High School. The tale of fast-waning hope, it seems, has become the universal story of modern America. That’s why the Florida Rep team selected Spotswood’s script as the top entry in last year’s PlayLab Festival of New Plays and Emerging Voices in 2016. In cooperation with the National New Play Network, the production will hold a rolling world premiere, with the first-ever staging of the show running here through May 14.
In anticipation of the debut performance, Florida Rep pulled together a team of veterans to the Fort Myers stage. Heffernan, who has
Director Maureen Heffernan pictured people she knew growing up in Ohio.
overseen productions of Sylvia and The
Little Foxes among other shows at the Rep, flew in from New Jersey to lead the first showing of Doublewide. Miami actor Gregg Weiner plays the role of household head Big Jim. Rep audience favorites Carrie Lund and Rachel Burttram play vital roles in the small cast. Even Cintron, in her first professional role on the main stage, appeared in Rep productions of
Romeo and Juliet and The 25th Annual
Putnam County Spelling Bee at the venue. “When I was asked to read the play, I was just blown away,” says Heffernan, who has been commuting from New Jersey to bring the script to life. “I recognize the people in this play, and I recognize the situation.”
Of course, while the script immediately was identified as a slice of contemporary America, no one when the season was first announced foresaw how the working class angst at the heart of the story would also upend the American political system with enough populist force that propelled Donald Trump into the White House. At public readings of the play held this winter, Spotswood got peppered with questions whether protagonist Big Jim would be a Trump supporter, or maybe a backer of Democrat Bernie Sanders. While all involved stress the play should not be seen as political posturing, there’s no doubt the current news environment will inform viewings. “The good thing about doing this now is that it puts a face on people we just talk about as numbers. It puts into clear focus why everyone should get a fair shot,” says Jason Parrish, associate director at Florida Rep in charge of the New Plays program. “Unfortunately, it’s a very timely play.”