Fact, fiction collide in ‘Collected Stories’ at Modern Spokane

There’s an overused axiom that you should write what you know, and following that age-old advice certainly comes with its consequences. Writers often treat their own lives as fodder for fiction, integrating private matters into their work. But at what point does artistic liberty veer into invasion of privacy?

Donald Margulies’ two-character drama “Collected Stories,” which opens tonight at the Modern Theater Spokane, delves into this moral quandary by way of a mentor-protégé relationship that begins to crumble when it’s discovered that one woman’s fiction is the other’s reality.

“As theater artists, it’s our job to tell stories that we believe need to be told,” said Nich Witham, the show’s director. “But this play is the first time that made me question, ‘Who has the right to tell your story?’ ”

The show is set in the New York apartment of Ruth (Diana Trotter), a middle-age author whose short-story collections were widely praised several decades ago. Her literary prospects having faded, Ruth now devotes her time to taking young writers under her wing. One of her discoveries is Lisa (Aubrey Shimek-Davis), an aspiring writer in her 20s who jumps at the chance to work as Ruth’s assistant.

We see their relationship develop over the course of six years, and part of the impact of “Collected Stories” comes from the way that the power dynamics between the two women are constantly shifting. By the second act, Lisa has achieved some kind of literary success; the only problem is that details in her work closely resemble real events in Ruth’s life.

“There’s a pretty distinct journey – where you can see point A and point B – for each of the women,” Witham said. “These women begin as strangers. … We don’t know how they end up, but the last thing we see is not good. Between those two points, we have friends, colleagues, mother-daughter – it’s an array of relationships. It’s just a very human story.”

Witham said he and his actors have stuck closely to Margulies’ text, as he wanted to steer the show away from any kind of dramatic overindulgence: This is a simple story that demands to be told as realistically as possible.

“I try to simplify everything down to the bare necessities, and for me, especially as a director, that’s the text. I’m very text-oriented – the beats he writes, the punctuation he uses, the words he italicizes. That’s the road map right there. … It’s a matter of putting the puzzle together. Once we discover the intention, we can discover what’s going on inwardly and then we start discovering the thought process of the whole scene.”

But the play doesn’t ask us to come down on either character’s side; it simply asks us to consider each of their positions.

“To have this play done right, you need to leave the theater having no idea whose side you’re on,” he said. “Perhaps a younger generation might lean more toward Lisa, the younger one, while the older generation might lean toward Ruth. … On the black-and-white page, there’s more of a vulnerability to Lisa that I think endeared me toward her more. But once we got into the rehearsal process, that completely disappeared.

“It’s about how to live and how to make choices in the blurry areas of life, especially when it comes to relationships.”