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“I never try to make any sort of political statement,” states playwright M.E.H. Lewis, otherwise known as Margaret. “Rather, my plays are intimately personal stories of human lives and relationships in times of great turmoil. I’m always interested in the way that ordinary people bend and warp under that kind of pressure. I’m particularly interested in the holes in the story, by the gap between actual events and official history, whether public or private. Entire generations can be shaped by events they don’t know about, and I love to trace the ramifications of a secret or a lie.”

M.E.H. Lewis

Margaret is an internationally produced writer whose newest play, Freshly Fallen Snow, was staged this past fall at Chicago Dramatists. Her other plays include the Joseph Jefferson nominated Burying the Bones and Joseph Jefferson winning Fellow Travelers. Her work has also been seen at the New Theatre in Melbourne, Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles, Cherry Lane in New York, Stage Left, Infusion and Infamous Commonwealth in Chicago, and Next Theatre in Evanston.

“The characters in my plays often consider themselves non-political, but they are still shaped and driven by events beyond their control,” she adds. “As writers, we always emphasize the importance of a character-driven story, and that’s something that seems very modern and very American to me, the idea that individuals are in control, driving their own destiny. I think it’s easy to forget how much we really are at the mercy of the greater world.”

When asked about her writing process and where her people come from, Margaret remarks, “The genesis of a play is always situational for me. I learn about some circumstance or event that fascinates. For example, in Burying the Bones, which was produced at Detroit Rep last fall and will open at Milwaukee’s InTandem Theatre this October, the situation was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-apartheid South Africa. In my new play Double Helix the situation is the search for kidnapped orphans of Argentina’s dirty war. Whatever the situation, it always offers moral complexity and ambiguity, high stakes, and a turbulent political or historical backdrop. As I research the situations, I start to think about the people who would be involved in it. In other words, the characters arise from the setting and circumstances. And then the story rises from the intersection of character and setting.”

“I do very intense research for my plays, and sometimes that also takes a toll,” she goes on to say. “When I was researching Burying the Bones, about apartheid, or Small World, about the lives of child soldiers, for example, the facts I learned were so horrifying that I actually developed physical stress symptoms like insomnia, rashes and hair loss. I’m also fascinated by monsters — a slave-owner, a torturer, an infanticide, a terrorist, a murderer. I truly love all my characters, and that can lead me into dangerous psychological waters. It’s an uncomfortable thing to not just walk inside the skin of a monster, but actually feel empathy for it. This is never about justifying or excusing evil actions. It’s about figuring out the incremental process by which a normal person, perhaps even a good and decent person, ends up committing atrocities.”

Finally, when asked for any words of wisdom, she simply comments, “I guess the closest thing I have is the realization that I don’t do this for money or for good reviews or for shiny prizes or for fame. I do it for love. And after all, that’s really the only reason to do anything.”

dpost@dramatistsguild.com