10-14-05
Keith Huff
My hope is that the very thing that compelled me to write this play will compel people to want to see it. Fairly recently, my wife, Georgette, and I became parents. My daughter, Robin, is now four years old. As if it’s not already difficult enough to raise children today, adding to the challenge is an unanticipated level of moral complexity. I’ve observed firsthand that some parents, almost against their better judgment, develop a she-wolf ethic—a way of justifying choices for the sake of their children that they may have formerly rejected. I find this terrifying. This moral erosion can seem relatively benign on a small scale (for example, parents instructing their children to cut in front of me and my daughter while standing in line at Kiddieland), but multiplied by the number of parents in an entire country, the fallout can be far less benign. It can lead to cruelly taking advantage of the disadvantaged and starting wars to preserve a standard of living—all for the sake of the children.
2. August Wilson picked up the song of black America by hanging out at the bars in Pittsburgh. Where did you pick up the song of Southside Chicago?
Hanging out at the bars on the Southside of Chicago. Both of my parents were born and raised in Chicago. Before my father either realized or was willing to admit he had a fairly serious drinking problem, he and my grandfather used to take my seven brothers and sisters and me to various Southside taverns, where my brothers and sisters and I would fight over who would get to drop shot glasses into their beers. I wasn’t old enough to drink at the time, so I listened. Additionally, my father-in-law, Harold Hieber, was a career Chicago cop who eventually rose to the rank of Area 5 Commander. He was a wonderful, honest, caring man and a great friend. Before his death, he spoke at length of the complicated ethical choices cops have to make as they walk the thin blue line between right and wrong. In retrospect, it seems to me we all walk the same line every day, every moment of our lives.
3. Almost all of the action is in the past. What made you want to write this as a duologue?
We make sense of the world by telling stories. A duologue, which is the term I’ve coined to describe a single narrative woven by two people, invites us to ask a number of compelling questions: When the facts of a story diverge, how are we to determine who is lying and who is telling the truth? How much of what we know as truth comes to us in what are essentially fictional modes of discourse? Most importantly, if stories help make the world in which we live meaningful, what does it say about meaning itself when we are told two contradictory version of the “truth”?
4. Who is the father of Rhonda’s baby?
I don’t know. I doubt even Rhonda could answer this one definitively.
5. You have numerous versions of “family” in this play. What do you think of the American family?
We’ve heard a lot of talk about “family values” over the past several years. Although I find family values laudable for the most part, using the good of the family to justify questionable moral choices is an extremely dangerous and extremely slippery slope.