It’s very personal for him, and it’s new to him, too. He’s long been a talented playwright, but most often it’s been about the wonderful “Butch & Bert” back-and-forth dialogues they’ve created for a successful series of murder mysteries.
But that’s not what this is.
This, instead, is “Places”, a play written by Butch Maxwell, a local thespian whose Murder Mystery Unlimited company has been very popular in the Wheeling area for more than a couple of decades. The theatre troupe, in fact, will perform “Popguy the Sailor” on Friday evening at River City Restaurant.
“Places”, though, is a story he insists “had been burning in the back of my mind for 20 years”, and it’s scheduled for stage at Oglebay Institute’s Towngate Theatre for one weekend only – Friday and Saturday, June 12-13 at 7 p.m., and Sunday, June 14, at 3 p.m.
Maxwell, however, is not portraying one of his created characters, and he’s not directing his play either.
“When people have asked me really insightful questions, I’ve deliberately not said much about the play because I’ve wanted the script to speak for itself,” he said. “But I also did not want to direct it so, instead, Cassie Majetich is directing because she has an intimate understanding of the play.
“She’s also a fine director, and I wanted to turn it over to someone else,” he said. “I think it’s important to get the interpretation of an external director who can bring insights that perhaps I didn’t even consider, as well as working with the actors to bring that out. And I’ve also noticed that Cassie’s process is asking actors what they think and what they believe the backstory is, and what they’ve been able to discern about where they are in the play.”
Maxwell has also created what playwrights refer as a “Play Bible” to assist Majetich with her interpretation.
“That’s how I know the backstories of all of my characters, and I’ve put in hints about that, but they infer things that are slightly different, too,” he said. “And that’s perfectly fine, and in fact, kind of interesting to work with, I’m sure. The insights that both the actors and the director have given me have actually been very helpful, too.
“It’s a learning experience.”
Tales of Life
In so many ways, Maxwell will tell his own story on Towngate’s stage.
The storyline of “Places” moves quickly as the audience meets the characters – Sarah and Eli and Marla and Jake and Tom and, of course, The Director – and follows a story told by local thespians preparing for a performance inside a community theatre.
And the irony is purposeful.
“The story is based on how I met my wife,” Maxwell said. “We met in the theatre when we were doing a play together at Towngate Theater. It was called ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ and that pretty much stimulated the thoughts for this play because I took some elements of those characters and enhanced them for what I’ve completed.
“But that’s where the similarities end because the trajectory of my work is completely different than what it is in ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’, but the overall theme did,” he explained. “So, the story itself is these two people meet, they’re cast together in a production, and actually what goes on in that production serves as a parallel to what is going on between these two people.”
There are scenes in the theatre, and a few in a “local tavern”, too.
“It takes place in a community theatre as they begin to mount this production,” Maxwell revealed. “It starts right after auditions and ends on opening night, and it goes between the theatre and a nearby dive bar where a lot of the drama takes place. too.
“The play runs fast; it’s probably going to play at just a little over an hour, maybe 70 minutes, something like that,” he explained. “No intermission, just 11 scenes, and it happens all pretty quickly, too. And the ending is purposely ambiguous, in that we don’t wrap everything up nicely, but I think there are a lot of themes involved that people will enjoy very much.”
Life lessons, lost love, and career confusion are all included in the on-stage conversations, and Maxwell’s personal insight, he believes, allows the tale to translate to the members of the audience.
“The main thing is that these characters are struggling to find themselves. They’re middle-aged; they’re about 40, and they find themselves having made choices in their 20s and 30s that now they feel like they are locked into,” the playwright explained. “Perhaps they made some bad choices; lost their way. That’s who these people are.
“They feel like they’re trying to reset,” Maxwell said. “One part of it is the marriages that they both got involved in.”
Bert
“Writing a play is strange. You spend months — sometimes years — alone with characters and voices in your head. Then, one day, those voices belong to other people.”
That’s something Maxwell shared this week on his Facebook Timeline as a promotional post for “Places,” and although he didn’t name his dear friend Bert Furioli, his writing partner who passed away unexpectedly almost a year ago, his words reveal his new, solo experiences.
“This play had been burning in the back of my mind for 20 years,” Maxwell admitted. “And my wife Vera said, ‘Why don’t you write something real instead of these silly murder mysteries?’ And I said I would one of these days, but I didn’t really started writing it right after Bert died. I can’t really explain that connection, but that’s what happened. That was the sequence.
“The first thing I wrote after he passed away was a murder mystery. All by myself. I wrote a Seinfeld murder mystery that Bert was against, in fact, so I wrote it by myself,” he explained. “And then, as I’ve done before in the past, I just sent him a text and said, ‘Bert, I finished the play. Would you like to read it, and then maybe you could add some stuff to it?’
“I didn’t get a reply text, and Vera and I left to go to Ireland. I got a call while we were there from Bert’s sister saying she’d found him dead.”
Furioli was a clever man with a quick wit, a slant of silly sarcasm, and a world view more honest than most, and his perspective permitted a level of laughter that only absolute hilarity could provoke. Of course, Maxwell and his Mystery Theatre Unlimited crew will honor his comrade by continuing to churn out their popular, comedic satires, but the playwright has finally taken a step he’s wished to travel for a lifetime.
“I do believe Bert’s passing last year was kind of a catalyst for this because I had been writing in partnership with him and it’s all been murder mysteries,” he said. “We started as sketch comedy writers so, what we did was basically expand those skits to an hour-long show that were murder mysteries. But now I’m on my own, and my writing is different.
“I’ve written five new murder mysteries and, while they’re still funny, they are better mysteries, I think,” he said. “Now, working independently, I feel much more compelled by character arcs by not just going for the joke. In fact, ‘Places’ is the first serious play I’ve written, and now I’m on a roll.
“I’m getting old, so I’d like to see if I could write a play or something that would actually outlive me. That would be okay.”
