Origin of the Species Synopsis

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

(excerpted from the playbill for the play "Origin of the Species")

I kept a lot of legal pads and clippings in a box in the corner of my wife's office. This was my first play. I was afraid to throw anything out. Now the stuff is like a time capsule. There's a cover story on animal sexuality in a 1992 Discover magazine, an article from an old Observer, and pages and pages of longhand scratching. ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES was and is a beginning. Born in the wake of loss and mourning, it became an underwater wander into my childhood and my own protracted adolescence. I see my sisters and my friends, my cousins and my parents in these characters now, but as I wrote them I didn't feel I could control them. I jumped on the toboggan and leaned and closed my eyes and sometimes got clobbered.

Now, four and a half years later, this production is like sending my child off on the school bus. She's got her bookbag and her stuffed monkey and she doesn't seem worried. I'm standing on the sidewalk waving. This isn't easy. But this is what it's all about. I am so grateful to every person whose name you read in this program. The faith and generosity of artists must never be taken for granted. This play is no longer my play. It's their play, your play. Play.