Dramaturg's Note

By Rob Silverman Ascher

Dramaturgical writing is often haunted by the question of “why this play now”. Basically Children, however, is a play surging with the concerns of today, a container for its questions and ills. Initially a cutting satire of social justice-minded queer college students, Basically Children has grown to have a massive heart, with empathy for its characters at their best and worst moments.

Basically Children began as a rendition of the real story of Alex Morse, the twenty-something mayor of Holyoke, Massachusetts. Morse, a gay man, was publicly accused of inappropriate sexual relationships with students at UMass Amherst (where he taught as an adjunct) while running for Congress. Exposés from The Intercept indicate that there were no such inappropriate relationships, and that Morse’s accusers were supporters of his opponent Richard Neal.

Even though the college students Morse had interacted with on Tinder were consenting adults, questions of consent in relationships with wide age gaps were central to the discourse. When someone becomes a legal adult, can they suddenly consent like a legal adult? Why does the placement of that line vary so much by state and country? Further, in the immediate fallout of the accusations, many were reminded of the uncomfortable reoccurrence of baseless accusations of sexual transgression and pedophilia often leveled against publicly out gay men. In a world where homosexuality was (and in many places still is) treated as a pathology, queer people of all stripes are accused of deviancy.

Sound familiar? As you read this, the right wages yet another culture war against teachers, gay or not, who they accuse of poisoning the minds of impressionable children with the notion that queerness, transness, and racism exist. Often, when a play works overtime to “meet the moment”, it falls prey to the pitfalls of topicality. The play is a rush job, and the main goal is to strike while the iron is hot so the author can feel secure in getting their two cents in. Basically Children doesn’t do that. Outside of its resonances with the cultural moment of May 2022, the play asks questions about desire, self-identification, and the existence of evil that always have a place in discourse.

As hackneyed a question as “why this play now” is, its value lies in positioning that play in the context of its performance. When the context of its writing and performance are inextricably linked, as is the case with Iowa New Play Festival, the answer is not just an intellectual contortion with the end goal of getting the audience to care about the show they are seeing. Basically Children’s importance lies in how it portrays real conversations and situations that are going on between friends, lovers, and generations all over the world right now.