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She plays drums in a band called The Distractions, she volunteers at a counseling center for young people who’ve experienced loss, she’s the mother of two, grandmother of five. And she writes plays. But before all this, Elaine Jarvik was a professional journalist with degrees from Syracuse University and Northwestern, who worked for 27 years at the Deseret News, a daily newspaper in Salt Lake City.

She launched her playwriting career most impressively when her short play, Dead Right, was produced at the Humana Festival in Louisville. It’s an off-center look at an aging couple, arguing about the content and style of obituaries in the newspaper. Several of her early short plays also focused on issues of aging. The subject compelled her, because of problems she saw with both her parents and her in-laws. “I was also propelled by stories I reported for the newspaper,” she says. “And of course there was my own impending old age and the fact that I’m both a pessimist and a worrywart.” And so her first full-length play, The Coming Ice Age, focuses on a retired couple in conflict about keeping or leaving their home. It premiered at Pygmalion Theatre in Salt Lake City. “I write a play to figure something out,” says Elaine. “How we embrace our decline as we age is one.” 

The next phase of Elaine’s career was marked by experimentation with both subject matter and technique. She and her daughter Kate wrote (a man entered) because, as she says, “they wanted to explore why a man would decide to stop having contact with his children.” Two Stories, her next play, focuses on what happens when your neighbor builds a house that blocks your sunlight and your view. Salt Lake Acting Company premiered both plays. 

Plan-B Theatre in Salt Lake City produced her next two plays. Marry Christmas is a documentary about gay couples in Salt Lake City who married immediately after the ban was lifted against same-sex marriage. Her most recent play, Based on a True Story, defies theatrical conventions. As Elaine puts it, she had been trying to get away from people sitting around talking. Then one of her directors showed her a picture of a woman in aviator goggles and said, “Write a play.” She immediately thought of time travel. “What would happen if a woman accidentally found herself 30 years in the future after arguing with her husband?” she says. And that was it. “No more people sitting in chairs talking!”

When asked about what she was working on now, she answered, “A play about someone considered the worst at what he did. I don’t want to jinx it by saying anything else.” 

And so, our mother, drummer, journalist, playwright, compelled as ever by the story, the chance to tell a story, is hard at work. As she puts it, “I regard my desk as both a refuge and a tiny precipice exposed to the elements, where I am either relieved or despondent.” One of the most disciplined and talented writers around, she is at it and getting better all the time.

Elaine Jarvik

jjensen@dramatistsguild.com