Sag Harbor Playwright Robert Schenkkan's Latest Draws on His Roots

For Robert Schenkkan, it’s personal this time; it’s about Bob and Jean. A distinguished playwright for 40 years who has won a Pulitzer and a Tony, his newest play is a love story about his parents, told through the letters they wrote each other during World War II. As part of its world premiere, Bob & Jean, A Love Story, will open the season for Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, beginning May 27.

“When I read Bob and Jean’s letters, I learned a whole new side of my parents,” says Schenkkan, who lives in Sag Harbor. Theirs was an unusual romance.

Both actors, they met in college and immediately disliked each other! Eventually a truce was called. Then the war broke out and friends fixed them up for a date at a Broadway show.

“It was like lightning,” he recalls. “Instantly, profoundly, in love. And then Bob, a bomb disposal officer in the Navy, was shipped off to the Pacific! Meanwhile, Mom joined the USO and began touring in a production of ‘Arsenic and Old lace’ to entertain the troops. When would they ever see each other again? Who could say. But they agreed to write as long as they were separated.”

Some of those letters had gotten lost over the years and some had been chewed on by South Pacific rats. But enough remained to open a magical portal to the past.

Schenkkan, who grew up in Texas with his three siblings, says of his parents: “They were strong-willed, opiniated, funny people, and their letters are thoughtful, hilarious, and deeply moving. It was a profound gift to get to know them in a way that most children don’t have.”

Both of his parents are now deceased but the letters brought them to surprising life.

“We tend to think of our parents from a very selfish perspective,” he says. “We forget they were once young, with their own dreams and ambitions.”

Jean’s story was especially touching. She was a very modern women in many ways, and her struggles as a young actress, alone in New York City, trying to break into the business, feel very familiar.

“She talks about moving a lot, as her money dwindles, to increasingly smaller apartments,” he says. She laughs about it but if you read between the lines, her anxiety is clear.

Schenkkan says it reminds him of his own early years in New York City as he kept moving from one illegal loft to another as he worked toward his own big break.

“Eventually, my folks actually helped me with the downpayment on a small studio apartment. It was my mom’s idea, a typically generous impulse on her part. But reading the letters, I now see how my situation must have resonated with what she herself had lived through. She wanted better for me.

Schenkkan says anytime you open a door to the past, you have no idea what will walk through it but this play is true to their friendship and romance. But don’t expect him to give any secrets away before you see the show. He wants the audience to experience Bob and Jean’s extraordinary love story just as he did, one delightful surprise after another.

He and wife, Deborah, moved permanently to Sag Harbor eight years ago. Deborah retired from being a chief financial officer for a tech firm. She now has a private accounting business. They share three children, two sons and a daughter. One son is also a writer. It’s a new marriage for each of them, but he believes they’ve captured a love as lasting – and hopefully inspiring – as his parents.

Schenkkan explains, “1943 was a very dark time and the future was deeply uncertain, but Bob and Jean made the decision to love and to marry and to have a family. They chose hope.”

“Our current world is not unsimilar,” he continues. “A lot of young people today wonder, should they get married? Should they have children? I think this play, with its optimistic tone of hard-earned love and hope, will resonate with audiences.”

Despite busily preparing for opening night, Schenkkan still finds the time to enjoy the things that made he and Deborah decide to permanently relocate to Sag Harbor from New York City. What does he do with that all too infrequent free time?

“I love to cook, so I appreciate the blessing of so much beautiful fresh produce here on the South Fork,” Schenkkan says. “Of course, we get out as often as we can,down to the beach, or maybe a walk in Elizabeth Morton Preserve. Then, for a change of pace, we’ll take in the latest art exhibit at The Church, or at one of the excellent galleries on Main Street.

“That, of course, will require a pick-me-up coffee at Grindstone, then around the corner for a sweet at Clarissa’s Bakery,” he says. “We’ll end the evening by watching the sunset, and then going to dinner at the American Hotel, catching a movie at Sag Cinema, and finally to BuddhaBerry for a treat. There is so much you can do in Sag Harbor. We love living here.”

Bob & Jean, A Love Story, opens in previews May 27, and runs through June 15. For information about tickets, call the Bay Street Theater & Sag Harbor Center for the Arts at 631-725-9500. The theater is at 1 Long Wharf.

“Come see the play,” says Schenkkan, “and fall in love all over again.”

Todd Shapiro is an award-winning publicist and associate publisher of Dan’s Papers.