All in the Family

Adrianne Krstansky, Kippy Goldfarb, and Jen Alison Lewis.

I’m thinking about family.
‘Cuz that’s what Legally Dead is all about.
Family gone wild.
No holds barred.

As I’ve gotten into the world of Dan Hunter’s play over the past couple of weeks. I’ve found that, as wild and crazy as any part of the play is, I find roots of the interactions of these “wacko” characters in what I thought was a reasonably happy family life of my own. Take some subtle, innocent seeming interaction in a family, blow it way out of proportion, and we’re in the world of Dan’s play.

So there’s the Lincoln family, in Legally Dead and the one that has come together to make this production.  All the actors are my “siblings,” parents Dan and Steve, and perhaps Kate as a grandparent, only in seniority, at BPT helping to guide and shape us in our journey to the full growth of this nascent tale.  Some of this family I’m meeting for the first time—hello Dakota, Justin, Danyelle, another I met up to 25 years ago—good to see you again Steve—with varying additions to my family in between.

We are also part of a much larger extended Boston family—full of nuclear families of actors who work together regularly (most notably Shear Madness, in it’s 33 year) or who re-meet each other in different shows in different theatres in the area. And then there’s the Boston Theater Marathon, which gives all these various theatre families a chance to meet up once a year in lots of different combinations that wouldn’t necessarily have occurred otherwise.

I personally think that Boston is unique because of this extended-family feeling that we have here.  Granted, as in all extended families, some family units are closer than others, and some family members consider themselves—or are—black sheep, some people barely know each other, or don’t know each other at all, but there is a common-interest bond that brings us all together over and over again.

I have been delighted in working with my Legally Dead family, getting to work with actors, writers and directors whose work I’ve loved seeing in the past. These people are great. If the audiences laugh even half as much as we have in reading and creating this play, then look out!

-- Kippy Goldfarb