“This is kind of an unusual piece for me,” says playwright Robert Schenkkan. “You know, the work that Austin and national and international audiences would know me for in the theater – The Kentucky Cycle or the LBJ plays – tend to be kind of epic and dramatic, sometimes tragic. And this is a love story. It's very much a love story, and that's different for me. And it's been a wonderful experience and I'm so happy to have that experience here in Austin at the ZACH.”
Schenkkan, the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning writer (for The Kentucky Cycle and All the Way, respectively) is trying something new with his latest play, Bob & Jean: A Love Story. It's based on the courtship of his own parents, Jean McKenzie and Bob Schenkkan (who, years the events of the play, would found both KUT and KLRU in Austin).
In writing a play about their younger selves, Schenkkan says he’s connected with his late parents in a way he never did when they were alive. “We think we know our parents, but in so many ways we don't,” he notes.
“They wrote each other, famously – in our family famously – these series of letters, during World War II when Bob was stationed in the South Pacific and Jean was touring the United States as part of a USO company of Arsenic and Old Lace, entertaining the troops,” Schenkkan says. Those letters formed the basis for Bob & Jean. “They had just fallen in love when the war separated them and so this correspondence, over a period of a year and a half, is them trying to keep the spark alive and trying to figure out who they are and what they want from each other and what life is about. And I was always aware that the letters were there, up in the attic in this box, but I honestly [was a] busy ambitious young guy [and] wasn't paying that much attention. But many, many years later it became more important to me, as both of them had passed. And I saw this opportunity to really get to know my parents in a way that I never had, as young people – 22 and 25 – in the full bloom of their romance. And when I read through them, I was so moved and surprised and frankly entertained by it and I immediately began to see the possibility of taking this story and doing something with it. And the first thing I did was a podcast for Audible, but the goal was always a stage play, a theater piece.”
Those letters became Bob & Jean: A Love Story, which is currently onstage at Austin’s ZACH Theatre, under the direction of Schenkkan’s friend and frequent collaborator, artistic director Dave Steakley.
“I told him this was a bit like shooting fish in a barrel,” Steakley says, “because my dad was a pilot in World War II and my mom was a pinup girl painted nude on the side of his airplane. And I've collected World War II portraits for about the past 20 years, paintings, and so we've got those on display in the lobby at ZACH during the run of Bob & Jean. So I had a high propensity to love this. And you know, Bob Schenkkan… he had the heart of a poet. I think… what's so surprising is how immediate and of this moment the relationship feels, how modern Jean is and how ahead of her time. Forthright, strong, clear of herself as she finds her way. And then how literate these very young people are in their letters. So in this age of texting and instant messaging, I crave for communication that is this in-depth, trolling your heart and soul, for another person. And the beautiful way in which these two people do that for each other and try to sort out a relationship, not only over miles, but time and distance, you know, knowing that some of this correspondence may never make it or takes a month to get to the recipient, when the stakes feel very high for these two individuals who are trying to forge a life together, and Bob, who's very determined to marry Jean. So, it's a beautiful story.”
“It does feel very immediate,” Schenkkan says, “in this important way: which is that Bob and Jean… you know, this is 1943. And the world really does seem to be going to hell in a hand basket, you know? At that moment – we look back now and we think, well, of course the good guys won, but that's not how it felt. It's certainly not how it felt. It might have gone a very different way and they had no way of knowing. And so for them to make this decision to yes, love and get married and make a family was a really brave and powerful statement. And I feel like today we are in a similar place of anxiety about the world and about the country and about the future. And I know that my adult children and their friends seriously question the notion of family. I don't know, should you bring family? And I think that's why I think this play will have a real impact, really speak to something that young people are feeling very keenly right now.”
'Bob & Jean: A Love Story' is onstage at ZACH Theatre through April 19.
