Julie Hebert’s inspiration for family ‘Tree’ received in letters
By Mary Houlihan Curtain Call/mhoulihan@suntimes.com March 30, 2011 5:14PM
Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM
Haven’t we all wondered what our parents were like when they were young and just starting out in the world? What were their dreams and ambitions? Did life pan out like they expected?
Playwright Julie Hebert found answers to these questions in a batch of more than 200 letters her father wrote to her mother and his parents while a Marine in the Korean War. Her parents were on the verge of throwing them out when Hebert decided to take a look and was startled with what she found.
“What struck me was I didn’t know the man writing these letters,” Hebert said. “He was another version of my dad that I didn’t recognize. So as a playwright, that was something interesting for me to explore.”
The discovery of the letters would become the base for Hebert’s play “Tree.” But she also drew on experiences from her own childhood, growing up in southern Louisiana in the 1960s.
“Jim Crow laws were still in place and I have vivid memories of the so-called ‘separate but equal’ culture and its humiliations,” Hebert said in a phone conversation from her Los Angeles home. “I learned early on that to discuss race openly was a dangerous minefield.”
“Tree” is Hebert’s attempt to have a contemporary discussion about “race and family and what it means to be related.” It debuted in 2009 at Los Angeles’ Ensemble Studio Theatre and now makes its Chicago debut at Victory Gardens Theater under the direction of Andrea J. Dymond.
In the drama, Leo Price (Aaron Todd Douglas) is an African-American chef who is caring for his aging mother, Jessalyn (Celeste Williams), with the help of his college-age daughter, JJ (Leslie Ann Sheppard). Into their lives comes Didi (Elaine Rivkin), a Southern white woman who recently discovered a batch of love letters between her father and Jessalyn, inspiring her to find her half-brother, now living in Chicago.
“Tree” explores issues of race, but it’s also about family, about parents and children, about lives lived and discovered.
“Didi had a very difficult relationship with her father,” Hebert said. “But in the letters, he is brave, tender and hopeful. The play starts out with her wanting to find out more about her father and ends up being about family and what makes a family.”
As a director, Dymond, who was instrumental in bringing the play to Victory Gardens, was impressed with its form and language. But she also saw something else going on here.
“There are so few situations in theater that have us and them onstage at the same time in an interconnected way,” Dymond said. “This is one of the few plays that I’ve seen do this. It’s important to go forward exploring who we are together.”
Hebert, who also writes for film and television, studied biology in college and says she “acted in plays for fun.” She planned to go to medical school but convinced her parents to let her move to San Francisco for a year instead. There she took acting and directing classes.
“I was working with people who took art as seriously as doctors and lawyers took their profession,” Hebert said. “That experience gave me the confidence to commit to a life in the arts.”
Part of this experience was working at the Magic Theatre in the early ’70s with Sam Shepard, who was debuting a play a year there, including lesser-known early works and now legendary plays such as “Buried Child,” “Fool for Love” and “True West.”
Hebert directed several of the early works, which led to an opportunity to direct and travel to New York with “Fool for Love,” starring Ed Harris and Kathy Baker. She also directed Shepard’s “Lie of the Mind” at Steppenwolf Theatre in 1987.
Hebert said she “snuck in the back door” when it comes to writing. Self-criticism prevented her from pursuing it in earnest until after she had her daughter and decided, “If I don’t start writing now, I never will.”
She has since written plays, movies and served as a writer, director or producer on such television shows as “ER,” “The West Wing,” “Third Watch” and “Numb3rs.”
But playwriting continues to hold a special place in her heart. She hopes “Tree” gets people talking in a good way.
“I hope that it moves people to have an honest conversation about race,” Hebert said. “And realize that we are all related and more similar than we are different.”
♦ “Tree” previews April 1-10, opens April 11 and continues through May 1 at Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln. For tickets ($20-$50), call (773) 871-3000; victorygardens.org.
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