Garrison resident will direct production at Depot Theatre
The Watched Pot, a play by Garrison resident Keith Hershberger, opens for a two-weekend run at the Philipstown Depot Theatre on Friday (Jan. 26).
(Photo by Linda Milne Speziale)
Hershberger wrote the play 40 years ago. It has been produced three times, including twice in Rochester at Conundrum Players, a community theater in a church sanctuary. In 1983, it premiered as a staged reading in New York City after Hershberger won the Jane Chambers Memorial International Gay Playwrights Award presented annually by the Women & Theatre Program and the Association in Theatre in Higher Education.
Last summer, Hershberger — who retired to Garrison in 2018 with his husband, Kevin Green, after the couple had lived in Brooklyn for 26 years — read his 1983 work with fresh eyes. “It felt real and true for me,” he says. He asked a few people to read it and shared it with Amy Dul and Nancy Swann of the Depot Theatre.
Their response was to ask whether he wanted to do a reading or a full production. “I asked them who they had in mind to design the set and to direct it,” Hershberger recalls. “They said, ‘You design it, and we’ll build it.’ An incredible designer, Dana Kenn, painted the floor, and it’s so spectacular.”
Set in the early 20th century, the play centers on two women, each nearly 80 years old, who bucked convention in their 20s and bought a farm together. As one prepares to die, they share their last hours together, recalling their younger selves. The story is set against a backdrop of pacifist Mennonite culture clashing with the looming World War I.
Tension is provided by waiting — and unwelcome — family members. Only a 16-year-old nephew has genuine affection for the women and their relationship; he faces a coming-out process of his own.
Ultimately, “it’s an uplifting story of hope and resilience, with a lot of heartening interaction between the characters,” says Hershberger, who is directing. Each time it was produced, “it inspired people to tell me their stories.”
The story was inspired, in part, by Hershberger’s experiences growing up in Michigan. “When I was 10, my father came home from work as furnace man in Flint,” he says. “He had serviced the home of two women who lived as man and wife, which piqued my interest, trying to imagine their lives.”
In Rochester, Hershberger produced 21 plays for the Conundrum Players, which he founded. “I was invited to start a theater” at the church, he says. “It was a theatrical ministry: no preaching. We did secular shows.” He also acted and built sets for 17 productions as president of the Gratiot County Players.
Hershberger has written six plays and a musical. The first play, Home for Thanksgiving, is about a young man who comes home after attempting suicide. He is unsure how to talk to his parents about being gay.
“It was important to me to start telling these stories,” Hershberger says. “I was late in coming out — 27 — and I decided I wanted to help young people so they wouldn’t feel so alone.”
His other plays include Garage, about a 17-year-old boy who lives in an abandoned garage hustling to make a living (his girlfriend is unaware) and Cornucopia, about a gay couple with children who are visited by a long-distant brother who reveals that he has AIDS.
After moving to Philipstown, the first production that Hershberger saw at the Depot Theatre was Phil Geoffrey Bond’s My Queer Youth, “which helped me become part of the community, particularly the theater community, right away.”
The cast of The Watched Pot is Sybil Bell, Tyler Dehm, Patricia Fischer, Stephanie Hepburn, Elaine Llewellyn, Lucia Petty, Naomi Vogt, Amalia Timm and Laurence Wallace. Thai Dodge is the stage manager.
The Philipstown Depot Theatre is located at 10 Garrison’s Landing. The Watched Pot will be performed at 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and 4 p.m. on Sunday over two weekends beginning Jan. 26. Tickets are $25 ($20 for seniors and students) at bit.ly/watched-pot.
