Spokane Playwrights Laboratory premieres new play from local playwright Pam Kingsley

As COVID-19 restrictions were being lifted, theaters were looking for ways to take the first step toward a new normal, a way to start small and remember what it was like to produce a performance.

For Spokane Civic Theatre, that meant hosting a playwright’s festival. For playwright Pam Kingsley, that meant the first iteration of “Finding Mother Courage,” which she describes as a “post-modern Agatha Christie” story.

Her play, then nine pages and 10 minutes long, was accepted into the festival. Kingsley received feedback, primarily “What happens after she leaves?” and she set the piece aside.

About six to eight months later, Kingsley got the urge to pick “Finding Mother Courage” back up, eventually writing about 30 more pages before putting it down yet again.

Having worked with Spokane Playwright’s Laboratory previously on her piece “Minister of Sorrow,” Kingsley decided “Finding Mother Courage” could benefit from the development and support the lab provides and submitted her play to their open call.

“You need someone like (Scott Doughty, co-founder and artistic director of Spokane Playwrights Laboratory) and Spokane Playwrights Laboratory by your side when you really are challenging yourself in this way, because it’s too isolating as a playwright,” Kingsley said. “You’re there with yourself and it’s tough to be by yourself with a big project. You need the skill of a companion on the road to finish a play.”

“Finding Mother Courage” runs Thursday through Sunday at the Blue Door Theatre.

All plays are submitted anonymously, so Doughty and the review team had no idea they picked a local author to fill one of four spaces from the more than 250 scripts they received until after they’d made their final decision.

Doughty said he and the team were struck by the skill and virtuosity of the playwright behind “Finding Mother Courage.” They could tell right away that this person knew what they were doing. The new, original story also quickly piqued their interest.

“It’s really important to SPL, in our mission, that the stories we tell have the potential to change lives,” Doughty said. “ ‘Do we feel like this has the potential to really shape and impact someone, to really hit them hard?’ Then there was a blind wow factor. … This is a fun way to talk about something that all of us find really challenging and very scary. I can’t give too much away, but it has a really great, innovative way of coming at this.”

“Minister of Sorrow” was a one-woman show, plus a musician, while “Finding Mother Courage” features a cast of six: Preston Loomer, Mary Starkey, Doughty, who also directs, Jeffrey St. George, Koa Nemo and Jean Hardie.

A larger cast comes with different challenges in the writing of the play and the rehearsal. Kingsley said it is important to approach the process with a lot of trust and willingness to collaborate.

In a “standard” production, the director and cast take the script and get to work, with no involvement from the playwright. With a Spokane Playwrights Laboratory, the play being produced is still in the works, and the playwright is on hand to make changes as they see fit up to and including during performances.

“It is really important for the playwright in this process is that everybody in that room informs the work,” Kingsley said. “When you get great people really interested in the process, it’s a joy. It’s like nothing you’ve ever had before. Not to say that when a play is cast, it isn’t a wonderful process. But in birthing a baby, you need, sometimes, some help there by your side to know you’re in safe hands.”

The chance to help develop their character alongside the playwright motivates a lot of actors to audition for Spokane Playwrights Laboratory productions, Doughty said, calling the experience one of the most challenging but also most rewarding processes out there for an actor.

“A lot of Spokane’s local talent choose to come be a part of SPL instead of other projects because it’s so thrilling to be in the room and have this experience and to partner with playwrights and make something that’s really your own,” he said. “No one else has ever done this. This is purely your work as an actor.”

With talkbacks held after each performance, the audience also has a chance to share feedback and shape “Finding Mother Courage.” It’s in front of an audience that the playwright really gets to see what works and what doesn’t, Kingsley said.

She incorporated feedback from the Spokane Playwrights Laboratory run of “Minister of Sorrow” into later versions of the play that were then performed in North Carolina and then at Stage Left Theatre, calling the feedback hugely vital.

In the past, Spokane Playwrights Laboratory would stage just one performance of a work, but they’ve since extended a show’s run across a weekend so audiences have more chances to see the piece and share feedback.

That decision was also made because Doughty said a Friday night crowd reacts differently from a Saturday night or Sunday matinee audience, giving more variety to the feedback.

Another change now gives the playwright and the laboratory three months, rather than three weeks, to work together before a play is presented.

“Every single playwright that we’ve worked with has been like, ‘That’s a really tight runway – three weeks till opening night? It’s good, but it’s so intense. It would be amazing if, you give some feedback, I have more time to really sit with it, think about and figure out how to incorporate that,’ ” Doughty said. “So that’s exactly what we did.”

That extended rehearsal period also helps strengthen the connection between playwright, cast and crew who must all rely on each other to handle the evolving material with care.

“None of us really know what’s going to happen,” Doughty said. “Anything can happen between now and then, and that’s what makes it fun.”