Where Was This Stage Adaptation of ALIEN When I Was A Teenager?
Pictures of CARRIE WHITE STORY (2008) by Sean Pollock. From L to R: Maya Shaw, Rachel Dickert
2008. I am 16. I'm working with my former mentor on a non-musical production of Stephen King's CARRIE that I wrote myself at The Darress Theatre in Morris County, New Jersey, in the blazing heat. Of course, the theatre does not have air conditioning. There are about 12 teenagers and one 20-year-old in this show with varying levels of experience. My former mentor is in his 40's, overseeing all of this happen.
The stage is very deep and wide and has a faded royal violet curtain with holes in it, with broken footlights on the end of the stage. Attached to the main stage by small ramps, two other miniature stages act as appendages to upstage right and left named the "Winter Stages." One of the side "winter" stages has a trap door built into it where Carrie gets shoved into her "prayer closet."
To this day, I've never worked in a theatre like it. I don't live in New Jersey anymore; I live in North Carolina. Still, I have somehow managed to come and live back in Jersey for the summer with my friend Maya from North Carolina while an affluent neighbor is on vacation. My script is awful, and I don't know how to direct at all. I wrote to Stephen King's agents to get the rights, and they told me no. I decided to move ahead anyway, seeing this as inconsequential. To throw his agents off my tail, I choose to call the play CARRIE WHITE STORY, as if somehow that will fool them.
My former mentor, who will go unnamed upon seeing my passion, says: "One day, you should start your own horror macabre company. You could do a stage version of ALIEN."
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2011. I am 18. I have finally moved back to New Jersey. For the last year, starting when I attended summer camp at French Woods, I have decided to write a stage adaptation of the classic 1975 thriller film (and the 1971 book it is based upon), THE STEPFORD WIVES by Ira Levin.
Picture of THE MERRY WIVES OF STEPFORD (2011) by Tom Timbrook (full credits below).
I decide to call it THE MERRY WIVES OF STEPFORD, playing off the Shakespeare play, which I have never read or seen to this day. I consciously know that my adaptation is unauthorized. Still, many adults and my peers assure me I will be fine, considering nothing happened with CARRIE WHITE STORY. I do not feel like an intellectual property criminal because such little money is being pumped into this entire production. This is really just a group of kids trying to put on a play, and we'll be lucky if we break even on the profits (if there are any). We're all still learning, and by we, I mean mostly me. This feels like an educational experience. What makes it different--and what will arguably become my demise here--is that while we were all students, it was performed outside of a school. There is absolutely no way Mountain Lakes High School would've allowed anyone to stage a play with material like this in their auditorium. Despite my hard work, my script is not awful, but it's way too long.
I became obsessed with the '70s and recreating the aesthetic of that era on stage. It is one of the biggest plays I've ever worked on. It has a cast of around 15, including college students. We're back at The Darress. Tom Timbrook, the owner, has really gone to town and even built a kitchen for the main character, Johanna, on one of the winter stages. For all the trouble I go through, the result is very creepy. Even all these years later, the final stage picture of Joanna re-entering the world as a Stepford wife--a hallow, metal robot manipulated by sociopathic men--walking through the isles in a virgin white dress, washed out by a blinding spotlight and smiling at the audience with dead eyes, is imprinted in my memory forever.
But then, the unimaginable happens. It all comes tumbling down, hours after that final dress rehearsal. Tom calls me up while I’m still in class—I go to the bathroom to take the call.
“We’ve gotten a piece of mail here. I had to sign for it. It looks like it’s from lawyers.” Tom says.
My heart drops. I hear him opening up the envelope on the other side of the phone.
“Let me see…” he says. He takes a moment, and then he says. “Yup. This is a cease-and-desist. It’s the Ira Levin estate. They’re telling us we can’t do the show.”
“I’ll be right there”. I say.
I rush out of school, I tell the front office there’s been a family emergency and I need to go—and seeing as I’m 18, they can’t force me to stay, so they let me. I go to the theatre and Tom and I read the letter together. We come up with the only logical conclusion: we have to cancel. My heart becomes broken in a way that I’ve never felt before. It’s a gutteral, humiliating kind of pain. It’s all too awful to be true.
My boyfriend has driven from Long Island to give me roses. I cry in his arms. The following week, I returned all the costumes to the band teacher, who let me borrow them from our school's inventory. I weep in her office while explaining the whole thing, but it's all too traumatizing.
A respectable theatre journalist who I’d met once wrote an article called "Don't Let This Happen To You." The article painted me out to be an underage con artist like the notorious slimy film producer Menahem Golan, who was out to strike it big and evade copyright. But that's not the truth. I just want to tell this story, and I knew I didn't have access to a lawyer. It just seems like such small potatoes, but simultaneously, like the roof is coming in over me. I'm still in high school! But while my name and the show are listed in the article, I know it's me. Even re-reading it all these years later, it feels like a swarm of bees is stinging at my heart. It just got the story all wrong. That article vilified me without a shred of nuance.
Clipping of THE MERRY WIVES OF STEPFORD (2011) by Bill Westhoven in The Daily Record, Morristown NJ.
Later that summer, I break the law again, and I lose my license and my car. It feels like I have had my heart broken twice, both through fault on my own. But, unfortunately, some people have to learn the hard way. Slowly, I am beginning to realize that I am one of those people.
The blazing August heat turns into a crisp fall in upstate New York. I arrive at Ithaca College as a freshman. After participating in a shadow cast of THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, I decided to start my own theatre company dedicated to horror and science fiction plays and musicals. I rack my brain and remember what my former mentor told me: "One day, you should start your own horror macabre company. You could do a stage version of ALIEN."
I decided to call my company Macabre Theatre Ensemble. Our premiere production is a parody of the film TEETH, which I got permission from the author to write. But only then do I learn that the difference between an adaptation and a parody is that a parody cites under fair use—it's seen as a criticism of the work. Therefore, rights are not needed if it's explicitly labeled a parody—and I churn out a few horror parodies. (Fair use also covers transformative works, which is a nebulous middle ground between parody and adaptation). Unfortunately, one of them is an atrocious parody of Tim Burton's BEETLEJUICE. Later, TEETH and BEETLEJUICE would get legitimate musical adaptations. In fact, a commercial musical adaptation of BEETLEJUICE is set to open on Broadway eight years later.
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Picture of CARRIE THE MUSICAL (2012) by Erik Jaworski. Pictured: Amelia Marino as Carrie, Sappho Hocker, Dan Lesko.
2013. I am 20. Macabre has a considerable cult following, but everyone in the theatre department thinks I am a nut job. My show posters are ripped down. People tweet mean things about me, and Theatre Arts Management Majors jokingly sign their friends up for our interview spreadsheets for new members. One particularly mean-spirited boy tells me Macabre will run itself into the ground and not even try. I legally got the rights to CARRIE: THE MUSICAL and became the first official college production.
However, the theatre department doesn't give me space. We stage the musical in a film auditorium, and public safety is forced to stay past building hours. I am forced to reserve the space until 11 and pay them for being there. It completely sells out, as do virtually all my shows from this point on. However, the show runs a few minutes past 11. But I don't know this because I haven't even gotten the chance to have a complete run yet to time it. So, public safety tries to shut down the show at 11:00pm sharp, right before the finale number. They complained to my faculty sponsor that I went over the reservation time and caused an inconvenience. The sponsor drops me after the production closes. Macabre is at risk of shutting down entirely if we don't find a new faculty sponsor. If this doesn't feel like the story of my life by this point, I don't know what is.
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2015. I am 22. 4 years and 22 productions later, and my time with my beautiful sci-fi horror theatre company ends. It is under new leadership. Macabre produces THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW annually now, taking it over from another student theatre company that wanted to rid their hands dry of it. Finally, as I am about to leave, Macabre is making the most money it has ever made. It feels like I am handing off my child to new parents in the act of sweet sorrow, but it is an essential act of growth. My dad drives me home, and as I pass the beautiful upstate scenery, tears fall down my face as my finger traces the passenger seat car window. I cry because I have to grow and don't know where I'm going.
But I remember what Becky Ann Baker's character says to Hannah Horvath in GIRLS: "If you love something, let it go." I know that creating scrappy horror and science fiction theatre has given my peers joy and agency. I know it unifies young people because we are not taught that this kind of theatre is possible for geeks, weirdos, and horror nerds. I know that I had to prove this to be accurate, and I hope that my legacy will remain at Ithaca potentially for the rest of my lifetime, if not only to prove a point.
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2016. I am 23. I have lived in the city for less than a year. After discovering we share a mutual friend, I met with Ira Levin's son, Nick Levin. He apologized to me over lunch about the cease-and-assist, realizing he didn't know I was in high school then. He doesn't permit me to adapt THE STEPFORD WIVES as a play, even though I earnestly ask this time to his face over an egg-and-cheese sandwich with hot sauce and fries at a diner on Madison Avenue. He says if his father wanted a play version, he would've written one while still alive. However, he says a musical adaptation might be possible since Ira Levin couldn't write songs and despite its commercial failure, loved working on the musical of DRAT THE CAT on Broadway.
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2019. I am 26 years old. I have worked on various horror, sci-fi, and experimental theatre in New York. Some shows do better than others. This spring, a dystopian sci-fi musical, BE MORE CHILL (which also started in Jersey), is a massive Broadway hit—the first of its kind on Broadway. I logged onto Facebook a few days ago. A headline from CNN appears: "High school's 'Alien' play is the talk of Hollywood"; "High School' Alien' wins Internet Raves," the New York Times flashes. In reading further, I learned a production of the 1979 hit film ALIEN is being staged at North Bergen High in Essex County, near my hometown of Mountain Lakes.
Picture of ALIEN: The Play (2019). Photographer and subject unknown.
There are furious debates on "The Official Playwrights Of Facebook" because the drama teacher who adapted the play did not get proper permission. Many playwrights are understandably pissed off. Why are we making movies into plays still? Why not new plays? Why not MY plays? Some ask. Others say, The teachers who are allowing this are doing a disservice to these kids—they committed copyright infringement. The teachers involved should be arrested for stealing intellectual property. Despite the overwhelmingly negative response by the theatre community (or at least the community on "The Official Playwrights Of Facebook" and the Onstage Blog), the show is celebrated. The scrappy teens applauded for their resourcefulness: they even made props out of recycled materials!
A voice replays in my mind: "One day, you should start your own horror macabre company. You could do a stage version of ALIEN."
I have a wild, polarizing mix of contradicting emotions when the article breaks.
On one hand, I want to cry out on the top of the tallest mountain in their praises because I feel that in a way, my view on theatre throughout my youth has been validated: by taking a giant copyright infringment--y risk, North Bergen High School proves that horror and sci-fi theatre (aka “genre work”, as I’d call it) fascinates the whole world. But the real story is not about a stage version of ALIEN. It is about young people subverting the narrative of what “youth theatre” should be. It gives its middle finger to all of the high school productions of ANNIE, YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU, and SEUSSICAL. It is about them working together doing something unique, different, frighting and weird, putting it on a big stage and getting the whole community involved.
On the one hand, I want to cry out on the top of the tallest mountain in their praises because I feel that, in a way, my view on theatre throughout my youth has been validated. North Bergen High proves that it's worth it to occasionally break the rules of I.P. and make your play based on a famous horror movie. It also proves that horror and sci-fi theatre (aka "genre work," as I'd call it) fascinates the world. But the real story is not about a stage version of ALIEN. It is about young people subverting the narrative of what "youth theatre" should be. It gives its middle finger to all of the high school productions of ANNIE, YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU, and SEUSSICAL. It is about them working together doing something unique, different, frightening, and weird, putting it on a big stage, and getting the whole community involved.
I am jealous, angry, remorseful, and even wrathful because of my troubled past. When I allow my memories to play back on the projector screen in my mind of the string of sci-fi and horror plays I slapped together over the years, I feel a great deal of pain coinciding with a great deal of pride. I remember feeling like the world was punishing me and not rewarding me. I did not get a New York Times Article when I broke the rules. Instead, I got an article on a niche theatre blog titled "Don't Let This Happen to You" and a cease-and-desist from influential lawyers. Truthfully, it still hurts that the rest of the world never got to see the fruits of my labor come to life.
When I started Macabre, the theatre department turned its back on me. And although the rest of the college thought it was cool, I still feel the betrayal of my own department. I start to honestly feel bitter. Maybe everything would've been different had I grown up as a teenager now had I done ALIEN instead of THE STEPFORD WIVES. I find myself scrolling and asking myself, Where was this stage adaptation of ALIEN when I was a teenager?
I decide to allow myself to feel the duality and reality of both truths. I allow myself to experience the paradox of the battling emotions within me. My feelings are split like Jekyll and Hyde. I decided to be proud of North Bergen High School's success while still feeling jaded, given my failure of THE STEPFORD WIVES all those years ago. I at once want the kids at North Bergen High to learn the hard way and have their wrists slapped as I did, but also protect them and hold them close---far away from the pain I've experienced. I want to tell them that nothing is permanent: success and failure. I want to say to them that lightning rarely strikes twice and gets the right for future things. Instead, I feel jealous, selfishly making this about myself, craving these young people's success. However, I remain hopeful that every dog has its day and that success can happen to 15-year-olds and 100-year-olds.
I decide all I can do in the meantime (besides feeling things) is make it to the opening night of my next horror/sci-fi play. The show is an anthology series of ten-minute plays called THE WEIRD by Roberto Aguirre Sacasa. The show is slated to premiere at The Brick Theatre on April 11-13. I have chosen this play in particular because one of the plays in the collection is a parody of Ira Levin's ROSEMARY'S BABY, called THE TEN MINUTE PLAY ABOUT ROSEMARY'S BABY, and guess who is directing it.
I decide I must keep growing, learning, and making theatre for punks and weirdos for the rest of my life.
Lastly, if I can, I will grab a seat to the alleged encore performance of ALIEN: THE PLAY at North Bergen High School across the river from me if the opportunity presents itself, where I will cheer and shout from the audience until I'm blue in the face.
Newspaper clipping of the original production of THE WEIRD at Dad's Garage (2005).
