It’s not easy getting over the loss of a spouse. Just ask Broadway Palm bartender Wayne Keller. He’s written an entire play built around that theme.
“Here's my 30-second little synopsis of it,” said Keller. “Middle-aged woman loses her husband, not that she can't find him, but he passed away. It's been a year. She has not left the house. Her best friend and her sister are very worried about her. So they hatch a plan. They ambush her in the house, and the plan does not come to fruition as that they think.”
It’s called “Sharing the Same Umbrella.”
Keller explains the title.
“If you were coming down in a rainstorm, you know you're going to get wet anyway. You might as well just have fun and get close to the person that you love and just walk through it all.”
Lucy Sundby plays the grieving widow.
“I remember telling Wayne that it very much is what a person who's going through grief is like. As somebody who has experienced grief and had to find their way back out of it, it is very accurate, in my opinion.”
But the play’s no downer. To the contrary, there are a lot of laugh-out-loud moments in the 90-minute comedy.
“Wayne has done a beautiful job of adding a lot of levity and almost ‘Golden Girls’-like banter throughout the show that keeps it from getting to a really dark and uncomfortable situation.”
Performances are in the Off-Broadway Palm theater Thursday, Aug. 28 at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, Aug. 29 at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, Aug. 30 at 7:30 p.m.; and Sunday, Aug. 31 at 2 p.m.
For tickets, telephone 239-278-4422 or visit https://www.tix.com/ticket-sales/theatreconspiracy/7728.
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In this world premiere comedy, local playwright (and Broadway Palm bartender) Wayne Keller tackles love and loss with compassion and humor, proving that life, and maybe even love, after loss is possible.
“This is a play that tackles grief with a certain amount of, I would say, dexterity in between with humor,” Keller said.
Although Broadway Palm patrons find Keller serving up drinks, he’s actually a prolific playwright.
“I wrote 10 plays last year,” he noted. “I've written five this year, so I'm well behind last year’s pace.”
He also writes children’s theater.
“My son has special needs, and so I've come up with whole worlds that kind of serve as parables for my son,” said Keller, who appears in the stories in the guise of a duck.
“My son's name is Xander. We call him Z. He's nonverbal, and so the first story that we have in a line of them is ‘Why Won't Z Quack?’"
Keller’s turned the story into a children’s play, which is being produced by a children’s theater in Ohio.
“We're working to bring it down here next year as well,” Keller added.
Having children of his own, Keller has read and watched a great deal of kids' stories.
“I’v seen so many terrible kid shows, but when you get something like a ‘SpongeBob,’ you're like, ‘You know what? I'm writing this for the kids, but I also have to keep the parents in mind too because they’re likely to be watching it too.’ So I write parables about different values and life lessons, but I won't come across heavy-handed, and at the same time, I try to bring up the intelligent level and not stoop down to beneath them.”
Although he’s been writing plays for nearly 20 years, Keller got his start in film. But he quickly discovered that it’s expensive and extremely time intensive to convert a screenplay into a movie.
“Working at Broadway Palm, I have been able to network with so many fabulous people, and it's just been a domino effect of ‘Hey, you should talk to this person, you should talk to that person.’ That’s how I met Lucy [Sundby] and how I met [Theatre Conspiracy Artistic Director] Bill [Taylor]. So it's always networking and you just never know who you can work with.”
Keller doesn’t just keep himself open to networking opportunities. Possessed of a cross between wry humor and good-natured sarcasm, he’s also open to new inspiration. Often that comes from conversations with patrons at the bar.
“I did lose the cocktail napkins. I'm actually typing instead of having cocktail napkins all over the place,” Keller said, laughing. “But the biggest thing that I can tell people is, number one, if you have a great idea, you write it down right away even if you're in bed. Don’t think you’re going to remember it tomorrow. You're not. Even if you do, it's not going to be as good tomorrow.”
While Keller didn’t get the idea for “Sharing the Same Umbrella” while mixing drinks, some of the observational comedy included in the show was informed by conversations he’s had with Broadway Palm patrons who’ve lost their spouses or significant others. He’s especially heard all the gaffs and awkward statements people make when trying to console someone who has suffered a loss.
“Some people run away from it and other people say the absolute wrong things,” Keller observed. “You'll hear some of that in the play, how we attribute that with the different characters. So, yeah, some of it's observational.”
Audience members will readily identify with the grieving widow, Helen.
“So Helen is stuck in the grief stage just like her husband’s death it was the day before,” Sundby noted. “She has a complicated yet loving relationship with her sister, who's been trying desperately to get her out of her shell and it just all comes to a head one day with Helen being very resistant to move on and her sister refusing to let her stay blocked. Finally [her sister and best friend] say enough's enough and they make her get up, get dressed and get moving.”
In a word, the play resonates.
“Whether it’s a spouse, parent, aunt, uncle or friend, we’ve all lost someone who’s facing a roadblock in their life,” Keller observed. “One of them is if you had a favorite places that you used to go to as a couple, and now you're not a couple anymore, you can't go back to that place even though it's a favorite place because you don't want to be reminded. That situation comes up all the time, and in my line of business here at the Broadway Palm, I see a lot of people who are theatergoers, and they have lost one of their partners and now they’re just trying to get through it. Sometimes theater helps.”
Keller said it comes down to giving the person who’s grieving permission to feel and speak their pain. Often, they just need to be heard. They just need companionship.
“That’s one of the themes of this show,” said Keller. “And companionship doesn't have to be a sexual type of thing. It's just companionship, men-women, men-men, whatever the situation is. Just get off your phone and talk to each other and that bond cannot be broken when it's really strong.”
Keller said that watching a play like “Sharing the Same Umbrella” is gratifying, not necessarily because it’s his work, but as a result of the collaboration it takes to breathe life into the words on the page.
“I'm just amazed by the creativity of the others who are involved in the process,” said Keller, who added that staying humble and keeping his ego in check is the key to success.
“When someone has a better idea, you give them that ball and let them do it. When an actress says, ‘Hey, this line would be better if I did this,’ I’m like, ‘Yep, you're right, go ahead.’ I always believe in sharing that creativity in the projects that we do.”
Keller was fortunate to work with an extremely talented cast.
“Everyone in the show has some great comedy chops,” Sundby observed.
Lauren Redeker Miller plays Helen’s sister, Diana. Shelley Sanders is the best friend, Sophia, who will remind audiences of Rue McClanahan’s character on “Golden Girls,” Blanche Deveraux. And Madelaine Weymouth is Claire, who prefers to go by the name of Athena. Seth Abrahms is the mystery man, Phred.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.