The following is a conversation between Margo Skornia, dramaturg; and Sarah Gazdowicz, director.

Why did you choose small hours?

I chose small hours because I had read it a long time ago – I’m a big fan of Lucy Kirkwood’s work – and it was the first play I had read that was like that, like a printed text of a play that has so little dialogue, but has such specific direction for what is happening onstage. It burned in my brain; it was in my memory. For the context of this festival, it’s one of the first things that occurred to me to potentially [produce.] I think something that was also a lasting resonance was, not just the structure of the play, but the story that it’s telling and how many questions you ask, and how you just get information piece by piece. Who is this woman? Why is she here? Who is she talking to on the phone? Then, [with] the crying, [we realize] there’s a baby. And there’s this filling in of how she feels about the baby and about what her experience is. Nothing is given to you. Everything is about how every small suggestion of the text really does matter. I’ve never done a play like this before. What it has to say about the experience that the woman in the play is going through is something that needs to be dramatized. I don’t think people talk about those circumstances a lot, and we won’t talk about it, because it’s unpleasant and it’s difficult.

Yeah, there’s this definite and very particular feminine ugliness that’s portrayed throughout this piece. We had talked about the fact that the play is, in your reading, more than just about this particular night and postpartum depression.

This was [not] an approach where the focus was [interpreting] or [making] postpartum depression onstage. What would a woman with this condition really do? That manifests so differently for every individual who experiences it, right? Overall, what the play is trying to show us is what it feels like to have to reinvent yourself. Obviously, people grow and people change over time. We enter these different stages of life, and we always have to redefine who we are as we pass through those stages, but there’s something so particular about being pregnant, giving birth, becoming a parent – for people who, you know, carry and bear children – that has to happen really quickly. And when it doesn’t, [there’s] a struggle there, and we demand [that] those folks and women redefine themselves as a parent, as a mother. There’s a social pressure that if you cannot adjust to this, if you cannot adapt, there’s something wrong with you. You’re a bad person; you’re a bad mother. I think that the play is about someone who’s trying to struggle with those outside social pressures to reinvent themselves on a timeline that is very short.

There’s an arm being twisted – a violence – there.

Yeah, we talk about it as being a motherly instinct, that it’s something that’s natural, and to some extent it is, and a lot of that clicks in for a lot of people, but that’s not true for everyone. That doesn’t mean that these people don’t love their children, or who don’t take joy and pleasure in being a parent. It’s just the immediate deliverance that is harsh.

Obviously, the cast is very small. Katie has to do a lot of heavy lifting. How do you support her as a director? How was your process affected by the fact that she is the only person onstage?

So much of it is about winding the spring. You wind the spring, you put the toy down, and it goes. Not that actors are toys! But it’s an internal mechanism that you have to set up and then let it release. For me, I feel like my job is to help her get set for the top of that show as efficiently as possible – know where she needs to go, where she needs to progress, where she needs to be, where the catchpoints are, and where there can be variation, where she can take time to discover – or move through really organically – the moments that are happening to her. [We’ve] been creating those touchpoints together.

This play has very little dialogue. So much of it, as you said, is stage directions, is business and action. How does the audience make meaning of a play that has so little dialogue?

That is so much up to the audience. All we can do is make decisions in the rehearsal room and onstage. How that comes across to an audience is so subjective. That’s true of any play, right? Sometimes, when characters say specific things, that can telegraph something really specific to the audience. As you said, that doesn’t exist here. But I think what is most important is that the work that we have been doing is [asking], why are each of these moments happening? What takes her from the sofa to the side table? There’s a motivation for everything. Creating those clear motivations creates a stronger road map for the audience to follow. Will they go the same direction that I think or that Katie thinks? Not necessarily. But we still have the same touchpoints that we’ve laid out.

Going back to that spring analogy, there’s not just an energy but a direction with those moments.

Yeah, totally. People could see the same thing and think, “Oh, I thought this happened.” And someone else could [think,] “Oh, I didn’t think that happened at all.” But there’s intention behind [every moment]; it’s not wiffle-waffley or hanging in the air.

Finally, what is the role of theatre during a pandemic? We are holding the Directors’ Festival life and in-person.

The thing is, an essential part of the work that we’re doing is contingent upon live performance. I think that, at the end of the day, there is a great desire. I’ve experienced, from within the department, and certainly from within the cast and the supporting team, a great desire to do everything they can to make this an experience where people feel safe, and people are kept healthy so that we can all serve this mutual desire to do these plays in-person. There’s a point at which we’re serving that [desire.] People are excited about it! What that means, I think I still need to reflect on. And certainly there, are people who are not ready to come back to the theater, and that also makes a lot of sense, but it does – for the people it means something to – people are really craving it. What that means, I don’t know, that’s probably really personal for everyone, but I think it feels good to be able to serve that, as long as we’re all serving each other, which I think is the important component of doing that at all.