Pain and Love in the Backyard
In Will Arbery’s new play, five conservative Catholics in Wyoming gather late at night by a fire pit to argue, commiserate, and face the uncertain future of their faith and their country. Danya Taymor, who directed the play’s premiere at New York City’s Playwrights Horizons last fall, talked to the author about his intentions and his hopes for the play.
DANYA TAYMOR: Was this play written in response to the election of Donald Trump?
WILL ARBERY: More than that, it was written in response to the response to the election of Donald Trump, especially here in New York. There was just a shock wave of bewilderment and destabilization— “How did this happen? What is this country? Who are we?” Because of the way I grew up, I felt that I had a responsibility to address some of those questions.
These characters come from your life and your experiences and the people that you grew up around. Can you talk about how they lived inside you, both before that election moment and afterwards?
Yeah. I had always wanted to write a play about the feeling of sitting in a dark backyard under the sky listening to really passionate, neurotic, inebriated Catholic conservatives hash it out. ’Cause that was a very, very familiar thing to me,
