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Photo courtesy of RLTP.
You might recognize Donna Hoke’s name as the editor of Buffalo Spree Home, or as one of Spree’s contributing writers; she has several pieces in the mag this month. But she’s also a playwright, and her deliciously adult comedy The Couple Next Door—the story of two suburbanites who try to remedy their marriage by hooking up with a swinging couple in the neighborhood—is the premier Road Less Traveled Productions show of the 2010–11 season, and runs from September 10 to October 3 at the RLT Theater, 639 Main Street. Hoke tells us about the show, and where it came from.
I have to ask whether or not the show was influenced by the, ahem, visitors to Grand Island last year.
You give me too much credit! The play was written long before Grand Island—and I really don’t know anything about that situation other than there was something with swingers and a Holiday Inn—but those events certainly provided a contemporary hook for this region.
So where did the idea come from?
It wasn’t originally a play about swinging; it started from the premise that no matter what public face a couple presents, you never really know what’s going on in a relationship behind closed doors. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to do that before I hit on swinging as an effective—and topical and entertaining—way to achieve that objective.
How involved are you in the process?
Very. Road Less Traveled artistic director Scott Behrend is directing, and he’s been great. We first sat down and had a long talk about the play and the characters, and he encouraged me to attend as many rehearsals as possible. Kelly Meg Brennan, Luke Wager, Matt Witten, and Natalie Mack are all very talented and funny. They’ve taken this material and done things I never imagined.
Is writing comedy difficult? How do you know what will work on stage, humor-wise?
The interesting thing about comedy is that what’s on the page doesn’t always read funny. In writing comedy, it’s almost necessary to imagine people saying the lines; if they’re funny in my head, I hope they’ll be funny on stage. But to illustrate my point, when I had the reading for The Couple Next Door, one of my fellow playwrights told me during the break, “When I read this, I didn’t realize it was a comedy!”
