WOMEN AND WAR: The Making of a Family Affair

The setting, The Cunningham family home,Thanksgiving Day, 2014. The request, an article about how Women and War by Jack Hilton Cunningham became a family affair. The time, before the martini’s have been mixed, because that’s how we role at Casa Cunningham… and we thought if we were going to say anything intelligent we’d better not pour just yet.

Heather (daughter, actress and producer, Retro Productions) and Jack (father, playwright) sit down at the kitchen table.

Heather: I was wondering if you remember what it was like to see Women and War with an audience for the first time.

Jack: Well, it was very emotional. I sat back and listened and doubted that I had ever written it — it just didn’t seem like it was mine anymore. And it really came together so beautifully in the first production — more so than it did at the first public reading at The Bleecker Company.

Heather: There were like 12 people in that cast, it felt unwieldy.

Jack: Yes, and it didn’t seem to have a cohesive core. And when Peter (Zinn, director and producer, The Bleecker Company) convinced you that we should do a production for Retro, that’s when he and I started meeting and working on the script, and that’s when the decision was made that all of the male characters would be played by one actor and we’d have four women.

Heather: I think we all played about three characters. I was definitely involved in some of those meetings — I remember one where I suggested you layer the stories on top of each other and shuffle them like a deck of cards.

Jack: That must have been before the meeting that Peter and I had where we actually started shuffling monologues together.

Heather: I remember talking to Peter about the different characters, I told him I couldn’t do Camp Follower. I told him I wouldn’t.

Jack: Because it’s Mrs. C in that monologue.

Heather: Right.

Jack: Your grandmother.

Heather: And I knew I couldn’t do it.

Jack: So working as a family team, with you as producer and actress, me as the playwright, and your mother as the costume designer and then of course your Mom and I designed the set, so it was pretty much a family collaboration.

Heather: And we collaborated on the workshopping process too, Peter had a lot to do with that too, but I mean the very very first reading you ever had I brought actors to the house and we sat around the dining room table. It literally started here around the dining room table. Before Peter was involved it was really long and sort of epic and once Peter came in he streamlined it. And, in all fairness, Peter is sort of an honorary member of this family! But you know Retro Productions is also a family affair — you and Mom were among the first four company members not including myself (the founder), so we’d been working together for a couple of years by that time.

Jack: Right.

Rebecca (mother, designer) enters the conversation.

Heather: Let’s talk about the design — because Dad’s original concept was that it be done without anything at all and I, as producer, said “If it’s going to be a Retro Production it needs to be designed.”

Rebecca: Yes. The concept was sort of suggestive period but not specific because people were doing more than one role.

Heather: And was that your concept or did you come up with the concept together with Dad?

Rebecca: Well, the costumes were my concept but his concept for the environment was to use the propaganda posters — we did the camouflage drop and the boards with the posters so you could connect with the various periods. The costumes were in a tight color scheme — beiges and olives — and everyone had a spot of red that were details from the periods of the characters.

The guests start arriving, we wrap up. The martinis start to pour. And I, Heather, the daughter, remember later that my touch of red, my suggestion of period, were my grandmother’s beads. Yes, that grandmother. So you see, Mawham was a part of this production too… twice.

Photo Credit: Kristen Vaughan. Retro Productions, May 2010. L to R: Lowell Byers, Lauren Kelston, Elise Rovinsky, Casandera M.J. Lollar and Heather E Cunningham.