The Other Side of 'The Other Side of Darkness'

Plays can come to playwrights in many different ways. According to legend, for example, Noel Coward wrote Private Lives in only four days. For Phil Geoffrey Bond, the process was somewhat longer. His new showbiz comedy-drama, The Other Side of Darkness, is enjoying its premiere at the Fringe Festival after a development that began ten years ago in a college classroom at New York University. And as all good plays do, it began with the characters.

"Stephen and Lillian Manners arrived in my head, for whatever reason, my senior year of college at Tisch," Bond recalls. "There was an assignment for a directing class, I forget what the object was, but I wrote a little ten minute scene between the two of them." After college, he put his characters "in a drawer" for six years. "But they kind of took up residence in my brain, and refused to leave… So I bought a black notebook and, throughout the next two years, whenever something they might say occurred to me, I simply jotted it down. Then, about two years ago, I just sat down and wrote it, sifting through all of those notes and choosing things for them to say that revealed character and moved the story forward."

The play progressed ten pages at a time, with several formal and informal readings as it developed. "And then we decided, against my better judgment because [I thought] it really needs a major set, etc., to do it in the Fringe," he says. "We pared it down, set and script wise, and found ways of making the production a hint more abstract, which forces one to concentrate on the story and the characters." Casting actors he already knew (Kristy Cates, Rob Maitner, and David Rudd) was also helpful: "I love having a little stable of actors with whom I work again and again," he says. "We understand each other and can cut through all the 'getting to know you, getting to trust you' stuff."

Bond was in an ideal position to write such a story, as his own star has risen in New York's cabaret and theatre scenes over the past few years. "It's a show business story, and that's where I make my living," he says, but is quick to add that his play is fictional. "Anything you write is going to, even on a subconscious level, contain some of your own baggage... your own life experiences intertwined with the art of it all, it's unavoidable," he says. "One of the biggest things I had to study was that whole Los Angeles scene, since the entire first act is set there. I spent some time in LA when we opened The Lion King at the Pantages, but was never really ingrained in the culture, the beat of that very odd little place."

"At its root, [the play is] really about success and the way it can both make love to you and destroy you, and sometimes at the same time," he continues. "There's a lot of metamorphosis going on in the play, which is what attracts me to the story."

"I've always been attracted to plays that force you to see life from a different angle, view life through the prism of someone else's experiences," he says, and adds that he hopes audiences will use their own experiences to connect to his story. "Good art should do that, I think, leave you with something to take away, like a gift bag at a party. My favorite kinds of plays are the ones where everyone argues about it afterward. If everyone universally loves the play or universally hates the play, it's probably not the most effective piece of theatre. But if everyone argues about it-- that, I just love. I just love inciting arguments."

Photo of Phil Geoffrey Bond (2006) by Genevieve Rafter Keddy

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