Notes on Talking With...

Writing director's notes is often a tedious task. In the midst of the flurry of rehearsals, set building, costume creation, and the myriad other tasks that fill a director's time, distilling thoughts about a show into a paragraph or two is rarely a happy task. In this case, the problem has been winnowing only a paragraph or two from the volumes of my thoughts about Talking With.

Why this play? Because it grabs me. As an actor, I love figuring out what makes people do the things they do, what makes them tick. As a director, I love giving talented actors the challenge of discovering and sharing complex characters. As an audience member, I love an honest baring of the soul.

Talking With gives me all of this and more. This marvelous collection of monologues gives us characters who tell us, directly and intimately, how or why they became the people they are. Each has had a loss, a change, or some major upheaval in her life. Each has reacted to these changes in unusual ways, ranging from the creative and benign to the dark and disturbed. Above all, I love storytelling, and at its heart Talking With is just that: a series of stories. These monologues do all the things I demand of great theatre. They make me think, they make me feel very, very deeply, they make me laugh and they make me cry. I think that the women you will meet tonight, however odd they might be, share common desires - for love, security, identity, and acceptance - that each of us can see within ourselves.

I never tire of hearing these stories, for each time I do I find another special something. What I take away from the experience is different each time. When the curtain call is over, I suspect that you, too, will take a unique and individual experience away with you. I invite you to open your eyes, your ears, and your hearts to an evening of love, laughter, fear, eccentricity, loss and sharing.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the roller coaster of Talking With.

-Trish Egan