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First-time playwright Erica Hemenway's work debuts

Herald Staff Writer

Bringing a character to life on stage is complex in itself, given the requisite details like back story, personality and historical context.

Taking five different characters from five different stories and five different time periods, well, that's just crazy talk. But Pacific Grove playwright Erica Hemenway just doesn't know any better.

"I started doing it as a character study," explained Hemenway, a 25-year-old CSU-Monterey Bay graduate who received her degree from the school's Teledramatic Arts and Technology program.

Talking about the five female characters in her debut play, "Waiting To Dance," she shares where the female characters come from and how her play evolved.

"I had actually written all of these women in short stories, each one literally had their own story," said Hemenway, who has also participated in the playwriting program at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. "I was sort of offering a premise of what would happen if they all came together. Their stories were finite, so this was a way for them to further explore that."

The characters are the hallmark of "Waiting to Dance," which will have its world premiere this weekend at the the Historic Hoover Theater in San Jose.

The play is being produced by the Renegade Theatre Experiment, a nonequity, nonprofit theater house that was established in 2001.

The company specializes in breaking new talent, and Hemenway's work marks the second time the company has debuted the work of a local, first-time playwright.

"From a company perspective, we were absolutely thrilled to have found Erica," said Whitney Quinn Stebbins, the company's managing director as well as the director of the play itself. "We're excited that we have the opportunity to present another world premiere. Part of our vision is to support local artists and new and different pieces of work."

A brief write-up describes the premise as, "Five women are brought to a room and reluctantly begin to share their tales in the hopes of answering the question of why they are there. Things that once seemed fairly clear suddenly become very complicated."

Hemenway said the characters are introduced as, "The temptress, the corruptor, the murderer, the adulteress and the slut."

"Right off the bat you get a feel for what's going on," she said with a laugh.

Going further, Hemenway gives an almost soap opera-esque set up.

"The temptress had an affair with a married man. The corruptor was a professor at a university and had an affair with a student. The murderer killed her stepfather. The adulteress had a long history of being unfaithful in her relationships and had an extramarital relationship with the slut."

If it sounds like a group therapy session from hell, then you're close. Hemenway provides the curve-ball twist -- they all meet in purgatory.

"Part of the reason I brought them to purgatory was that I was looking for a way to bring people together who existed in different times and places," she said. "And I thought how could I enforce those rules and bring them together where they could sit and talk."

Hemenway started writing the play in late 1998, but sat on it for a few years. Inspired by a production on the CSU-Monterey Bay campus, Hemenway workshopped it on campus around 2004, when a board member of the Renegade Theatre happened to be in attendance.

"It was just sort of luck," she said. "I got it to the right people."

And now, as opening night nears, the challenge is bringing the vision home. Stebbins said that comes with the territory of debuting new material.

"The thing that's most challenging is that because it's a world premiere, we have no template to follow. We have to start from scratch," she said. "I had a lot of hesitation directing it primarily because I was really concerned about doing it justice."

Hemenway can't wait to see her vision brought to life.

"It's unreal in so many ways. Just the whole gamut, when I think about it," she said. "I'm terrified and at the same time, I'm so thrilled. I'm amazed that they took interest in this little script of mine."

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