As playwright Liz Duffy Adams (Born With Teeth) explains – and will probably do many more times in the future – it was her longtime fascination with advice columnists that inspired her latest play Dear Alien about to open at Alley Theatre.
“It is a story about an advice columnist whose column is called ‘Dear Alien.’ His idea is it positions him to be giving advice from a position of objectivity, celestial, objectivity above the fray,” Adams says. “But he’s having an existential crisis. He’s a bit of a mess. And that’s the story of how he navigates that.
“He’s finding after seven years of this advice column that it’s driving him a little crazy and the questions are very repetitive. It’s the same crisis over and over again and he’s giving the same answers. And it’s kind of driving him nuts.”
Alley Resident Company member Dylan Godwin plays the advice columnist, while fellow company member Melissa Molano as Scrittora. and Brandon Hearnsberger, frequently employed at the Alley, plays Écrivain – both take on a number of letter writing characters. Shelley Butler, who Adams says was in on the first reading of the play long ago, is directing.
Adams has been writing this play off and on for the last 10 years. “Some plays happen fast and some plays happen really gradually and organically and I wrote the first draft of this around 10 years ago. It was pretty different then. It’s gone through a lot of stages of going in and out. Until it’s reached its current form.”
She’s a longtime friend of Alley Artistic Director Rob Melrose. “He was aware of this play. At some point he reached out and asked if they could take another look at it. Of course that made me really happy because I had an amazing time working with him and the Alley on Born With Teeth. “
The one-act with a running time of about 90 minutes takes place in modern day, Adams says. It’s set in an unspecified city, although Adams admits it feels a lot like New York City where she lives. The action takes place during one night in the advice columnist’s apartment.
“He explains to us in the play that he is leaving open the possibility for us to interpret him as an actual alien, marooned here long ago and struggling to manage in the human world, Adams says. “But he also assured us that the odds are, he’s just as human as us. It’s left a little bit of room for the audience to interpret that.”
The other aspect of this play lies in its title, the alienation that many people feel in our modern technology-driven modern world, she says. “The idea that the modern world that we’ve created for ourselves is antithetical to nature. We’ve created a world that has alienated us, that is driving us all crazy.
“So it’s sort of a quest, his quest and maybe our quest, to find a solution to that, to find a way out of this trap.”
On a less somber note, Adams explains happily that writing about an advice columnist gave her the chance to classify as “research” something she already liked doing. “The original spark for the play is the fact that I was addicted, I am addicted to advice columns.
Does she ever disagree with the advice she reads? Absolutely. “Part of the pleasure is arguing with the advice in your head.” Which is something that the play’s audiences will have the chance to do night after night during this run.
Performances are scheduled for May 8-31 at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays, and 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays at Alley Theatre, 615 Texas. For more information, call 713-220-5700 or visit alleytheatre.org. $45-$83.
