Morning After Grace Q&A with Playwright Carey Crim

Gulfshore Playhouse Literary Manager Audrey Zielenbach recently had a chance to speak with Carey Crim about her play Morning After Grace. Read more of that conversation below. 

Q. Tell us about your journey in theatre. How did you become interested in playwriting? How does your experience as an actor inform your writing?

A. I grew up in a local children’s theater in Michigan.  It was my second home. Then I went to Northwestern University where I continued to study acting and theater. After graduation, I worked in London for six months and spent a short stint in LA. When I returned home, I got my equity card doing Arcadia. I continued doing regional theater and commercials. Soon after moving to New York, I started writing my own audition monologues. I made up the name of a playwright and play because I didn’t want people to know I had written my own. But I started getting better feedback on the monologues themselves than the auditions. One night, after what I thought was a particularly good audition, a director called. I hadn’t booked the job, but he liked the monologue so much that he had sent his assistant out to Drama Bookshop to find it. But she was unable to find my non-existent play written by a phantom playwright. It was raining and I felt guilty he had this poor assistant out looking for it so I fessed up.  He told me if I ever did write that play, he’d like to read it. 

Unfortunately, by the time I did write that play, I had lost the director’s name and contact information. I thank him, wherever he is. So, I mounted a production in New York with my theater group at the time (Write Club) and got my first agent from that production. The following season, it was produced at The Purple Rose Theater. 

I’ve been told I write characters actors want to play and I’m sure that comes from being on the other side of things for so long. I know a lot of playwrights who started out as actors that began writing in order to write great roles for themselves. I realized pretty early on that wasn’t my goal. I’m happiest in my “role” as playwright. But I love actors. I love writing for actors. FIrst reads are one of my favorite parts of the whole messy process. 

Q. Can you tell us a little bit about the inspiration behind Morning After Grace? Where did the “seed” of the idea come from?

A. The inspiration came from a number of places. The play was a commission by the Purple Rose to write for two specific actors: Randy Mantooth and Michelle Mountain. Lynch Travis then came in as Ollie. Randy had been on the TV show “Emergency” in the Seventies and, though he had just turned seventy himself and battled cancer, he was still very much the same guy that girls had posters of on their walls and boys on their lunch boxes. I wanted to write a story for him that let him be all those things while still navigating grief and aging and love. The same went for Abigail and Ollie. They were characters of a certain age and, though that informed them, it did not define them. Abigail’s life might seem ordinary at first but is anything but. Ollie’s journey with his father came to me a little later in the writing process but became one of my favorite parts of the story. 

Around the time the commission came in, my dad and stepmom had moved into a retirement community. So I paid a lot of attention to that world whenever I went to visit and had many interesting and often hilarious conversations. Many of them ended up in the script. Also, I am just a generation behind the Boomers so I thought of my own life and how I hope to move through it as I age. Also there are so many incredible talents out there that are over sixty. It’s a privilege to write for them. 

Q. How did the play evolve as you developed it? Are there any big differences between the original draft and the published version? What were the biggest challenges or surprises you had writing the script?

A. It took some time to figure out my three people (before I started writing) but once I had them clearly and put them all together, the rest flowed. There were more changes between the first and final draft of the first production than the first production and published version. Those were mostly about deepening the characters’ needs and fine tuning the relationships.  I had a good sense of who they were apart but once I put them in a room together, they really began to reveal themselves so much more. 

Q. Did you have specific influences – real or fictional –  for Abigail, Angus, and Ollie? 

A. They were each inspired by specific people and influences but then they took off and became their own  things. 

Q. From inception to present day, what has been the most rewarding part of working on Morning After Grace?

A. Talking to actors after the show about what it meant to them to bring these three people to life.  The joy and connection they seem to find with one another and with the audience. Especially these days when we feel so disconnected.

Q. Your work spans a wide range of genre and thematic content. Are there any common threads between them, certain questions that you find yourself revisiting? How is Morning After Grace similar or different from your other work?

A. I lost my mom when I was seventeen so I write about grief a lot. Not always as obviously as Morning After Grace but it’s usually in there somewhere. Grief and second chances and what it takes to come back from something that seems impossible to come back from. And I tend to tackle forgiveness a lot because I think it is such a powerful thing but there is a cost. A cost of forgiveness, of letting go, as well as a cost to holding on. I have a new play called The Islanders that is about two lost lonely people who have been thrown away by mainstream society just trying to connect and how difficult and terrifying that can be. So connection is also a big one for me. And laughter is such a connecting force. 

Q. What are some things you hope the audience will reflect upon as they watch the show?

A. That, yes it is a play about coming to terms with growing older but really it’s about how we choose to live. This unlikely trio comes together, heals one another, and each one is better because of it.