By Blair Simmons
Rebecca Henderson and Phyllis Somerville in Too Much, Too Much, Too Many.
Via Roundabouttheatre.org.
When Meghan Kennedy was accepted to the NYU dramatic writing program, she thought they had made a horrendous mistake. She had applied only with a portfolio of poems, and an inkling that she might make a decent playwright. In her words: “I hadn’t written a play, but I had a feeling about it, but then I got really scared.” Teachers such as Paul Selig and Martin Epstein, successful playwrights themselves, taught her to follow her instincts. She says she doesn’t know where she would have ended up had it not been for the dramatic writing program, but now she has a play running Off-Broadway.
Speaking with unabashed enthusiasm about the New York City theater scene, she says, “I do feel like NYU prepared me for this.” She had never written a play before NYU, and now, she is the winner of the 2012 David Calicchio Emerging American Playwright Prize for her play “Light.”
Her new play at the Roundabout Theatre Company, “Too Much, Too Much, Too Many,” explores loss and grief. “It can live inside us,” she says, but it “is born out of love.” Kennedy wished to tell a simple story that would elicit the time it takes to grieve and how realization and transformation ultimately come through the process.
The play is about a woman, Rose, who locks herself in her bedroom after her husband dies. Her daughter Emma is forced to deal with her mother’s struggle, eventually turning to a local pastor for help.
“There is no room for falseness,” Kennedy says of the small black-box space utilized for what she describes as an “intimate play, personal play.” Kennedy felt listened to and cared for throughout the Roundabout process. “It was kind of a dream,” she says, to have her play picked up by tony-nominated director, Sheryl Kaller. Throughout the process, the script developed seamlessly and in a very natural way, according to Kennedy. “It’s such a bare play, there is no room for falseness,” a sentiment that truly shines through in this tale of simple grief.
Blair Simmons is a contributing writer. Email her at theater@nyunews.com.
