September 21, 2006 Issue
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Classified Chestnut Hill Local Online Editor Don't Miss an Issue, Tell us what you see or ©2006 Chestnut Hill Local Winner of One |
G’tn native, restaurant veteran, taking a bite
out of playwriting
Tom Minter took a course in playwriting while a student at Pomona College (California) in 1975. “Our whole course was geared toward our final, which was to be a one-act play. I did it as a lark,” the Penn Charter graduate and Germantown native said in a recent telephone interview. “My professor submitted my play to a competition. It won first prize. It was produced and the whole nine yards. I wasn’t really aware of what that meant so I wound up not doing anything about [playwriting] for another 15 years.” He left Pomona after about a year, returned to Philadelphia and went to Temple as a student in its radio/TV/film department. While at Temple “I wound up getting involved with restaurants so when [Chestnut Hill resident] Steve Poses opened up The Commissary and The Frög I was there for the whole thing. It was fun. That was theater.” For the next 15 years he worked in restaurants and, later, in hotels. “I really got involved with the whole ‘thing’ of food service: front of the house and back of the house. I wanted to make it a career. I was in corporate hotels for at least eight years. “I was working in Washington, [D.C.] and suddenly realized that if I did not do something that was extraordinary, to really test me, then I’d be turning around and wondering why did I just keep doing the same stuff that I was doing? “The only thing that really seemed like a challenge at that point,” Minter said, “was whether or not the play [at Pomona] was a fluke or if I could really write. “I figured: let me see. Let me have an adventure. So I wound up selling everything I had and moving to England.” Well, it worked. His latest play, Cakewalk, is currently being given its first full production through October 8 at the William Way Lesbian/Gay Community Center at 1315 Spruce St. in Center City. In England, Minter said, “I got involved with a group called New Playwrights Trust. At the time the woman who was running it was Polly Thomas. I walked in off the street. She was sitting in this office. We started talking and I said ‘I’m a playwright.’ She said ‘That’s great, what have you written?’ I said ‘Nothing.’ She said ‘Well, I guess you better get started.’ “That’s exactly how it started. I asked her how to do this and she said ‘Don’t think about the genre. Just write. However it comes out, just write.’ For the first period all I was writing was short fiction. Then it started focusing on dialogue; then full scenes, which turned into a play. New Playwrights Trust was the first group to do my work. They gave me a workshop production at the Theater Centre in Covent Garden. It was all on from there.” Minter’s father was the deputy of secretary of education under President Jimmy Carter. “He casts a long shadow,” the 49-year old playwright said. “He was fascinated by the hotel industry but when I went into theater, as with any parent, he was concerned if I could make a living with it and what would happen if people didn’t like it. “The last play I did in London was in the West End (London’s Broadway). It was called Exposition. It was a huge event. My father came over to see it. It was a fantastic evening. The show was great. People were impressed by it. “Then the next morning the papers came out. I was,” Minter recalls without a hint of anger, “eviscerated across the board. “My father had the paper and he came down to breakfast. He put it down between us. From the high of the night before to the pain of reading this the next morning was an emotional journey for him that I don’t think he ever thought he’d be having. He said to me, ‘I don’t know how you survive this.’ “It was about exposure. It was about having what I say and what I think and how I write out there for the public to applaud, assault, whatever.” In 2000 he felt it was time to return to the United States. Even though he considers Philadelphia his home, he moved to Washington because his partner, Bernard Vicary, got a job there. He also turned his attention to a play he had started in London. Wanting to write something that made people laugh and still interested in delving into the nature of relationships, he created a character who is a thirtysomething New York actor who decides that he’s pregnant. “I hadn’t done anything quote-unquote American up until that point. I wanted to do something funny. So I came up with this idea. The whole thing is not really about whether or not he’s pregnant. It’s about the trauma that ensues with his relationship and all the people around him who have to make the decision as to whether or not they buy into this, regardless of how crazy it is, or send him away. “It was an opportunity for me to look at family and what family does. If you love someone you love them. You either go with ‘em or you don’t love them enough. That’s how this came about. “It was written in 1996 when,” he added, “I was looking at being gay and wanting a relationship and what that meant. It is about commitment. It could have fallen out any number of ways but I just saw this as an opportunity for heightened comedy. Cakewalk is multi-layered. It’s humorous. It comes from real life and it’s non-judgmental.” Tickets for Cakewalk can be purchased at the door or through SmartTix online via cakewalktheplay.com |
