Stephen Bergman and Janet Surrey
Bill W and Dr. Bob
A nytheatre voices cyber-interview
Stephen Bergman is a psychiatrist and noted novelist and playwright. Janet Surrey is a clinical psychologist and author of a book in her field of women's psychology. Together they have written this play, their first collaboration, about the founders of Alchoholics Anonymous. This interview was conducted by Michael Criscuolo.
Bill W. and Dr. Bob tells the story of the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous. What about this story appealed to you, and how did you go about dramatizing it?
We had been together for a long time, and wanted to work together. We picked two projects: one from Janet's area of expertise, women's psychology (which led to the nonfiction book We Have To Talk: Healing Dialogues Between Women and Men) and one from Steve's (as Samuel Shem, author of the classic medical novels The House of God and Mount Misery). As psychologist and psychiarist, we had both worked extensively with alcoholics and addicts, and learned about AA. We came across a biography of Bill Wilson, and were overwhelmed — here was a great American success story — of healing! We were sure it had been told before — it had not! We contacted AA, and asked if they had any objection to our doing it — true to their traditions, they had none, as long as we issued a disclaimer on any publicity that the play had no affiliation or endorsement by AA. We also knew at once that it had to be a live stage play — it was the only thing that could capture the "aliveness" of an AA meeting. Finally, we realized that our main goal was to write a great play — one that happened to be about this particular story around alcoholism, but one that anyone would come to see, and sit in the audience, enthralled. With the Off Broadway production, this has happened. In Talkbacks we have heard this over and over again: "I didn't know anything about alcohol or AA, but I loved this play. It's a work of art!" It's rare in modern theatre to have a really great story told onstage, with great complex characters, and with great humor to offset the horror — we realized that the story had to "ride" on humor. It is an epic story, 23 scenes, several years, a total of approximately 25 characters (played by six actors). The audience is drawn along by the basic question: 'What's going to happen next?!' And the beauty of this story is that not only do we see the degradation, we see the redemption — these men earned their redemption — and the audience feels that. It's difficult to write authentic redemption onstage — and most modern plays don't bother, since it's easier to destroy than create — but this does it, and the audience leaves the theatre with a certain exhilaration. Finally, we wanted to try to be as true as dramatically possible to the facts as we knew them — and no one in over a 100 performances has raised any major issues with this.
The play uses the framing device of an actual AA meeting. Was this a conscious choice from the outset or a happy accident that happened along the way?
From the very first moment we conceived of the play, we had the vision of a man in a thirty's suit standing up on one side of the stage in a spot and addressing the audience: "My name's Bill W. and I'm an alcoholic. At a time like this, I wish my partner could be here. I'm talking about a man we all called — " And on the other side of the stage, in a second spot: "Dr. Bob, alcoholic, good to be here sober." They go back and forth, starting to tell their stories, and then the rest of the play is the stories acted out. At the end of the play, the two reappear, and Bill says, "And so as I come to the end of my story —" In writing a play, if you are lucky you get touched by the genius of the Muse, and in this little moment we did. After we "saw" it, we realized that the form perfectly follows and leads the function. Even now, after 25 performances in Boston last year and 90 Off Broadway, we still get chills when we see and hear this — especially when, if there are AA members in the audience, they shout back at Bill: "Hi Bill!" The first time the play was put on, the actor who plays Bill said the line, and when people shouted back he was startled; the audience laughed; he smiled; the audience applauded; he smiled more, and then went on. This was the reaction to the first line of our play! What could be better?
After the play's initial run in Boston, you took it to Akron, Ohio. Not the usual route to Off-Broadway. Tell us a little bit about the reason for this move, and how that experience was.
During the Boston run, we received a call from Stan Hywet Hall, a national historic site in Akron Ohio. Bill W. and Dr. Bob met in the gatehouse of the mansion in 1935. Every June 10 in Akron, Founder's Day (the day taken as the founding of AA, when Dr. Bob has his last "goofball and beer") attracts tens of thousands of AA members from all over the world. We were asked to bring the two actors who played Bill and Bob to perform several scenes from the play on a stage on the great lawn. They performed 20 times in two days (a 23 minute segment), and the crowds were overwhelming. To stand there and watch the actors recreate the "meeting scene", in front of the very place where the meeting took place 71 years before was an experience of a lifetime. It felt as if the real men were there, alive, once again. In the gala performance in the mansion, an old man stood up and said to the actors, "I'm John Sieberling, the son of Henrietta. She brought this meeting about, and I was there, and I could've sworn that they were right here before me again." It was an incredible experience for the actors — Patrick Husted and Robert Krakovski — and the director, Rick Lombardo. It affirmed the power, and the fact that there is a worldwide audience for the play.
Bill W. and Dr. Bob carries a disclaimer that it is not affiliated or endorsed by Alcoholics Anonymous, which seems a little strange to me. I can't imagine why they wouldn't want to be affiliated with this show. What's the reason for the disclaimer?
One of AA's 12 Traditions is to participate only in AA, to help alcoholics, and never take sides in any other issues. They wanted us to be clear about that, so that no one would think that there was any affiliation or endorsement by them. We were only too happy to do this.
Stephen, by day you're a doctor on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, while Janet, you are a clinical psychologist. And yet here you are, a pair of produced Off-Broadway playwrights. How did you first become interested in the theatre, and what made you get started?
Since 1968 Steve was primarily a writer. Medicine, and then psychiatry, was always his "day-job" while he wrote. Psychiatry was perfect because he could write in the mornings and see patients in the afternoons — and learn something about character. As "Samuel Shem" he is the author of four novels (next year his new one, The Spirit of the Place, will be published), and several plays. Room For One Woman and Napoleon's Dinner were done Off Off Broadway and published in The Best Short Plays anthologies, he was Playwright in Residence at the Boston Shakespeare Company, and had plays done there and in Boston. Over the past ten years he has focused on novels. Two years ago he finally gave up his day job, and writes full-time. Janet is a practicing psychologist and co-founder of the Stone Center for Women at Wellesley College, and a well-known expert in relational psychology and Buddhist practice. Janet got dragged into this by Steve, as he got dragged into writing about "the male female relationship".
Will there be more theatrical collaborations in your future?
Steve says this has been the most intense, exhilirating and exhausting experience since his medical internship in The House of God. Janet agrees, likening it to the early years with our daughter. We wondered whether we'd ever write a play again. And then recently we came back to New York after five weeks away from the play (we live in Boston), and sat watching it and were astonished. After almost 90 performances the actors are settled in, relaxed, deepening their characters and the play was fantastic! The full house was rocking! Standing ovation! We sat in the back and just beamed. We were in "Playwrights Heaven." It was as close to our vision of what the play should be onstage as we could have hoped. Calls for the script are coming from all over the world. Bill W. and Dr. Bob are alive. And, once again, the most satisfying thing is that we have told a story that does not just appeal to a narrow audience of those in "recovery," but that deals with a universal human story that anyone can identify with: the peril and horror of isolation, and the healing power of mutual connection. If you suffer alone, you die; if you suffer with someone, you heal. After all, what Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith discovered was unique in human history: "The only thing that could keep a drunk sober is telling his story to another drunk." As a doctor, Steve was particularly taken with Dr. Bob, at how he brought his medical knowledge, and his humor, to this endeavor — and yet is still less "famous" as Bill W. as a founder of AA. This was the start of all the "medical self-help" groups, such as "cancer groups" etc. This is what healing is, for all of us. And yes, we have ideas for two more plays, each a "great story" that moves through suffering to redemption. Stay tuned.
April 25, 2007
