I met Catherine Butterfield at a writers' retreat in Chatham, Massachusetts. On the first night at dinner, I talked incessantly about my brilliant career as a writer/director. Fortunately, Catherine overlooked my egotism and decided she liked me anyway.
It was only later, after I stopped talking, that I learned Catherine was the author of several published plays, including tonight's selection, Brownstone.
To me, Brownstone is about who you think you are, who you want to be, and who you are. If you think it is about something else, that's fine. This is a space which can accommodate different opinions, where I am the loudest.
The story also shows how significant historical events (there's at least four in the play) impact ordinary people and how the ghosts of those people intersect with one another.
In the time we have known one another, Catherine has written five other plays, and I've directed several of them. I did such a good job, we got married.
I am happy to report, Catherine and I have a wonderful creative relationship, and I hope she will approve this copy.
-Ron West
PLAYWRIGHT'S NOTE
When I was an aspiring young actress in New York, I was constantly on the brink of poverty. To make ends meet, I signed up with a temp agency called Lend-a-Hand. (Does anyone in the audience remember Lend-a-Hand? I’ll bet you do!) They sent me to some very fancy places where I was supposed to, well, lend a hand when rich people threw huge parties for their three year old’s birthday, or held extravagant dinner parties for guests like Truman Capote or William F. Buckley, or needed help organizing their immensely cluttered apartment. Frequently, these assignments took place inside brownstones, and were an eye-opening look at how the other half (read 2%) lived in Manhattan. Living, myself, in a very tiny one bedroom apartment with a kitchenette the size of a broom closet, the culture shock of suddenly being in one of these elegant brownstones was initially dazzling and ultimately depressing when I had to go home, sometimes just a block or two away. How could so much glamour be going on so close to me? What was I missing out on? It seemed like a great deal.
But I loved those buildings. I loved their architecture, and the way you could actually feel the past when you moved from room to room, especially if they hadn’t renovated too much. You could see the nicks in the doorframes from a previous family’s children, painted over. You could see that paint peeling away in places to reveal a much different color, the taste of a previous generation. Chandeliers sometimes looked like they had been up there for many decades; the bell you could ring for the maid was sometimes still intact, and the ornate crown moldings were works of art in themselves. The more ornate the better, was my opinion.
My love of brownstones continued long past the time I finally left New York, and I started creating stories in my head about the different generations that might have lived in one of them. This play is the result of all that daydreaming. I hope you enjoy it.
-Catherine Butterfield
