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The following articles appeared in Actors Theatre's subscriber newsletter prior to the 1998 Humana Festival

RESIDENT ALIEN by Stuart Spencer
The title of Stuart Spencer’s new play, Resident Alien, might normally conjure up comments like, "Hey, check his green card." But in this offbeat comedy of interplanetary exchange, the more likely comment would be, "Hey, check his green skin!" And that’s about as far as the differences go between residents and aliens here, for in this delightful character comedy we earthlings finally make contact with "the other" only to discover ourselves.

"What happens when worlds collide, even two worlds within one community, that’s what I’m interested in," notes playwright Spencer, who spins his intergalactic tale in a Wisconsin setting that resembles the small town he grew up in, De Pere. "The main character Michael is the person I never became, but might have if I’d never left. He and the alien are two sides of my alter-ego, each looking for connection and meaningful relationships in a place that feels like home."

And with whom exactly would the alien like to "connect?" "Let’s put it this way," explains Spencer, "an outsider looking at our planet would see that categories we create get in our way—race, nationality, sexual orientation—these cause many more problems than they solve. So while the play doesn’t have a political agenda regarding any group, it does have a very human agenda regarding acceptance and love. Ironically, that agenda’s best articulated by the alien."

At the top of the play, love and acceptance are lacking in this town where everyone knows everyone else’s business. A divorced couple, Michael and Priscilla, have been arguing over custody of 12-year-old son Billy. It’s clear they still harbor affection for each other, but Priscilla’s now married to Ray, a sportsman with a sobriety deficiency. Then something BIG happens, something out of this world, something Michael can’t get the others to believe about Billy. The local sheriff’s called in to straighten things out, but he’s a longtime friend of Michael and an old boyfriend of Priscilla, so he doesn’t want to get involved. In fact, no one really wants to get involved with anyone, and that’s a problem until the alien arrives.

"This is a play about alienation in a town where there is no norm, where nobody quite fits," says director Judy Minor. "It’s also a that says happiness may not be in your own backyard. You may have to search a little further, and if you think you’ve exhausted the possibilities at home, you probably have. We must all figure out what we need to do to be happy and then do it, and to heck with the rest if they can’t take a joke."

While Resident Alien gently spoofs both space fantasies and small town eccentrics, Spencer recognizes the psychological needs that UFOs fulfill: "the idea that we’re not the only world, that there are other places to go." There may be intelligent life in the universe, the play concedes, there may even be some on our planet!

— Michael Bigelow Dixon


STUART SPENCER
Growing up on farms outside the small is of Neenah and De Pere, Wisconsin, Stuart Spencer spent a lot of time alone, "finding ways to amuse myself by creating worlds more interesting and full of activity than my own." These worlds were inhabited by an elaborate and congenial group of imaginary friends he played with in the woods near his home.

As a child Spencer was discontent with rural life. "When I was really young, probably four years old, I’d complain to my mother about living in the country and ask why couldn’t we live in the city. That’s where I wanted to live. I didn’t even know what a city was, but in my mind it was very clear that that was what I wanted to do."

Spencer’s dramatic interest was sparked at a young age, but he never considered that playwriting was something people actually did as a career. That changed during his semester in London as a student at Lawrence University. While abroad, Spencer attended the theater on a daily basis and discovered that "there are such things as living playwrights."

When it came time to complete his college honors project, rather than "go to the library, get a play off the shelf and blow the dust off," he chose to write his own play to direct. The Golden Rose won the American College Theater Festival Award for the Mid-West Region that year.

Now Spencer writes "because I have to. It really is that simple. For a long time I thought that was sort of a cute thing that I said and other writers said. But it really is true. I find that when I don’t write, I’m unhappy, literally unhappy, and I’m very down and I get frustrated and cranky." Spencer laments, "I don’t sit down and write at the computer every day. But I feel that if it’s a good day, I have done something that relates to my writing." After graduating from college, Spencer moved to New York City and fulfilled his childhood desire to emigrate from rural to city life. There he became the literary manager of Ensemble Studio Theatre and began teaching playwriting and dramatic literature classes at Playwrights Horizons Theatre School, Sarah Lawrence College and New York University.

Spencer finds that teaching playwriting helped him identify problems in his own plays. "It’s a lot easier to see a problem in someone else’s play and work with them, get them to deal with it and fix it. Much easier than in my own. But by doing that, it also enabled me to see what was going on in my own plays."

Among Spencer’s body of work are Water and Wine (published by Smith and Kraus) and Blue Stars (published in the Best American Short Plays of 1993-94). His plays Sudden Devotion and Go To Ground have been produced by Ensemble Studio Theatre.

Stuart Spencer still lives in New York City but enjoys visiting his family on "yet another farm, outside yet another small town," in South Carolina. He likes "the idea of having it both ways....I live in New York, but I look forward to the day when I have my country home in upstate New York where I carry off to on the weekends. But in my case, I’d probably be in the city on the weekends and spend my work week in the country.

— Meghan Davis