Steve Scott

Director, Mothers and Sons

I’m a lucky man.

I’ve had the great fortune in my directing career to have worked with plays by some of the greatest classical and contemporary writers ‘ Shakespeare and Shaw, Chekhov and Tennessee Williams, Albee, Miller, Christopher Durang, John Logan. But no one’s work has spoken more personally to me than the plays of Terrence McNally. Few playwrights have had as impressive and varied a career as McNally has; he’s created beautiful romantic comedies, stunning character studies, riotous farces, absurdist dramas and a host of libretti for musicals and opera. And I’ve loved all of them. For some reason, McNally’s voice is my voice, or at least the voice that I’d have if I were an outrageously talented playwright; I know and understand and love each of the complex characters that he creates, the situations that he puts them in, and the dialogue – sometimes outrageously funny, often incredibly moving – that comes out of their mouths.

Of course, as a gay man who came to maturity in the late 60s and 70s, I am especially drawn to the depictions of gay life that McNally has created throughout his career, plays which have essentially captured the evolution of the gay experience for the past half-century. From the liberated hedonism of the 1970s (The Ritz) through the tragedies of the AIDS years (Lips Together, Teeth Apart and The Lisbon Traviata) to the hard-won equality of the past two decades, McNally has been one of the most distinctive, honest and poetic chroniclers of the joys and challenges of gay men in the past fifty years, and has given voice to many of the feelings and ideas that I’ve had, and that many gay men of my generation have had, during an era of incredible change. From that perspective, Mothers and Sons is one of his best works, a terrifically moving (and acidly funny) examination of where we are now, enjoying our new-found freedom to marry and have our own families but acutely aware of the tragedies that forever marked us.

Of course, like those other plays, Mothers and Sons is not simply about what it’s like to be gay in the contemporary world. From the specifics of that experience, McNally draws on themes that affect us all: the difficulties of creating relationships, hetero or homo, in the modern world; the challenges and comforts of family, both biological and created; the wellspring of despair that engulfs us in the face of loss; and the seeming impossibilities of emerging from that wellspring to find solace or hope. These themes are universal, no matter the sexual identification or gender or age of the viewer; and, although McNally seems to be channeling my own family experiences in this play, I’ll wager that many others from vastly different families will find something of their own experience.

I am thrilled to be able to direct this magnificent piece in the intimate setting of Northlight. I’ve had the good fortune to work with many wonderful Chicago companies ‘ including my ‘home’ company, Goodman ‘ but my experiences at Northlight have been among my favorite. Audiences here are smart, experienced and incredibly empathetic ‘ the perfect trifecta for any McNally play, but especially this one. The world of Mothers and Sons is a very specific one indeed, but one that I know our audiences will recognize and respond to.

In short, I am very excited to introduce one of my favorite plays by one of my favorite writers to one of my favorite audiences.

As I said before, I’m a lucky guy.