Writing plays for children is harder than for adults, says Steven Dietz, whose adaptation of the book "Honus and Me" premieres at Seattle Children's Theatre this weekend. But he confesses that the passion for baseball that drives the story may escape at least one audience member, Dietz's newly adopted son.
For Abraham, a 5-year-old from Ethiopia, "A ball is something you kick." Dietz grins sheepishly at the idea that his boy's first exposure to the sport will be from his play, rather than the Mariners game he looks forward to sharing later.
It's one of the slightly out-of-kilter effects that recent changes have brought to Dietz and his family. "Honus and Me" brings the prolific playwright full circle, with his first play to premiere in Seattle in 10 years also being his last as a full-time resident of the city.
This fall, Dietz will begin a post as a senior playwriting professor at the University of Texas, Austin. With his wife, Allison Gregory, and their children Ruby and Abraham, he will relocate there for "a situation that I felt I couldn't turn down." The position does allow them to keep their Seattle home, however, where they plan to return for the summers.
Gregory is a respected playwright as well, whose latest work, "Burning Bridget Cleary," recently concluded a run at Capitol Hill Arts Center. She and Dietz have partnered on other productions, such as "Go, Dog, Go!" at Seattle Children's Theatre in 2003, and her adaptation of "Peter and the Wolf" also played SCT this season.
It was partly because of his commitment to write and direct "Honus and Me" that Dietz delayed the move for a year. The confessed baseball fanatic had looked forward to staging the story ever since SCT's artistic director, Linda Hartzell, approached him about adapting Dan Gutman's award-winning book more than five years ago.
The theme of gaining self-confidence was an important one to Dietz. Joe Stoshack is 12 years old and loves baseball but isn't very good at it. While cleaning out a neighbor's attic to earn money, he discovers what he knows to be the rarest baseball card ever, of Honus Wagner from 1909. As Joe struggles with the moral dilemma to keep the card or not, he learns of its magical properties when Honus is transported to the present.
Through Honus, Joe learns about determination and playing better baseball, all the more so when the card carries him back to the seventh game of the 1909 World Series in Detroit.
The story of an older man acting as mentor to a young boy through the common love of a sport has had unexpected resonance for Dietz, who was writing soon after his father passed away.
It's partly in relation to his father's "real work" as a railroad man that Dietz feels especially fortunate to have been able to make a living as a playwright during the past 25 years, 15 of which have been spent in Seattle. "Honus and Me" marks his 29th premiered play.
Even more remarkable is his ability to build such a record with so little of his work performed in New York. Instead, his success has been built as a widely produced writer within the system of regional theaters. "God's Country," an exploration of white supremacists, was commissioned by ACT in 1988, and ultimately led to his move here. His works such as "Lonely Planet," "Private Eyes" and "Dracula" continue to be regularly staged throughout the country. It was only a couple of years ago that a work of his was staged Off-Broadway ("Fiction," at the Roundabout Theater Company).
Dietz believes it's the best thing that could have happened to him, and is glad that none of his work has had to face the gauntlet of a New York premiere. "I haven't had a hit play," he muses, "I've had a career."
Yet he wonders if anyone coming up now will be able to have similar success. For writers of his own generation, he said, "It was easier to be a playwright in the American theater." Arts grants that once sustained him are rare now, and regional theaters that would once read unsolicited manuscripts now refuse to, he noted. And he has long been a critic of the relentless cycle of workshops from which new work seldom emerges.
These are the realities that he wants to convey to his students in Austin, while giving them the kind of feedback that they might receive from a producing theater. He hopes that Seattle, meanwhile, will continue to foster its talent at home, a prerequisite to becoming a major center for theater.
"Maybe writers are tougher now than we were," he hoped. "I hope they blow my generation out of the water."