The Mile Square Theatre’s 7th Inning Stretch certainly isn’t the first time Hoboken and baseball have come together, but it is a unique combination of baseball and theater performed in Hoboken.
On March 15 at 8 p.m. at DeBaun Auditorium, the Mile Square Theatre (MST) is hosting its annual fund-raising selection of 10-minute plays, featuring the best past productions for this year’s All-Star Edition.
The theater company selected seven of more than 30 baseball plays that have been commissioned for the annual production since it began in 2003: “Fantasy League” by playwright Lee Blessing, “Foul Territory” by Craig Wright, “Love of the Game” by Warren Leight, “Striking Out the Babe” by Charlie Peters, “Asphalt Green” by Rogelio Martinez, “The Save” by Dano Madden, and “A Little Chatter” by Ellen Margolis.
The evening will also include a free reception complete with wine and hors d’oeuvres to honor Lee Blessing.
The home stretch
When actor/director and Hobokenite Chris O’Connor started the MST’s 7th Inning Stretch, the idea was to have an annual showcase of new work, which would help support the theater company’s summer productions.
“I chose baseball [for the theme] because of its connection to the history of Hoboken,” says O’Connor, who teaches at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts in New Brunswick.
The company doesn’t have its own performance space yet, but O’Connor hopes to find one within the year. Also, money raised from this event will help the company’s other programs throughout the year, including their main stage production at the amphitheater in Sinatra Park.
This year, the company will perform Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors for three weeks from the last week of July into August. The summer event is free to the public, so expenses for waterfront production, sound, lighting, and talent will be funded by 7th Inning Stretch: All-Star Edition.
O’Connor explains that the honoree of this year’s show helped give their fund raiser a great foundation when it was just getting started, bringing his name and credibility to the stage.
“Lee Blessing was the first playwright I asked. He’s really well-known. He’s produced all over the world. He eagerly agreed to [write for us] because he was a baseball fan.”
Batter up!
Connor cites Blessing’s contributions to American theater as well as to MST as the reason he was chosen for this special honor. Blessing was a nominee for a Pulitzer Prize as well as Tony and Olivier awards for his work, A Walk in the Woods, which ran on Broadway and in London’s West End.
Blessings short play, “Fantasy League,” was the piece he contributed to the first 7th Inning Stretch.
“The play was inspired by the enormous amount of money and energy that Americans tend to put into fantasy leagues and teams,” Blessing said in a recent interview. “It’s become an obsession for people. This is about such an obsessed individual and his long-suffering wife.”
Blessing, who wrote a biographical play about Ty Cobb and enjoys minor league baseball, contends that today’s fans are highly focused on stats, and so his lead character is actually injured by his relentless research to build the perfect team from each player’s record, and then, he learns hard lessons during a forced timeout from putting together his ultimate team.
“And he learns a great deal about his wife that he didn’t know,” says Blessing, who explains that he would like people to do a little thinking about how they let their hobbies and interests dominate their personal relationships. But, Blessing also wants the audience to have fun – it’s a comedy, after all.
“The nice thing about a fantasy league is that it allows everybody to participate, to be a coach, a manager, and they can try to outsmart each other by picking the up and coming talent,” Blessing says, adding that he understands the obsession. “This play is simply a cautionary tale based on that observation.”
After writing plays for 30 years, Blessing is grateful for the Mile Square’s recognition:
“They’ve worked with a lot of wonderful writers for their festival, and I’m quite honored that they would bring a piece of mine back for the all-star edition.”
Another featured playwright is Dano Madden, whose work, “The Save,” was featured in 2005. Madden is a huge baseball fan, his team is the Mets, and he lives in Hoboken.
Madden describes his piece as exploring “the simple power and beauty of baseball,” explaining, “It’s a little league baseball game where you meet some little league moms and then a stranger shows up at the game.”
Madden defines the stranger as a lost soul, one who causes much stir among the moms, some being overly concerned about a stranger who doesn’t seem to be a parent watching their kids play ball, but in the end, the stranger’s story is revealed, as is the soul of Madden’s message.
“There’s something kind of pure about little league baseball,” Madden explains, who doesn’t have any kids of his own yet, but hopes to one day. “If I’m around, if I see a little league game in Hoboken, I’ll often stop and watch an inning or two, because I really enjoy it actually … I always find it kind of a therapeutic sport to watch and be around.”
On the other end of the spectrum is Craig Wright, who wrote “Foul Territory” for the very first 7th Inning Stretch. Wright is a writer for the hit series Lost and Six Feet Under; he also worked on the screenplay for the upcoming superhero movie, The Flash.
O’Connor asked Wright to write something for the first anthology evening, and Wright called upon the only real experience he’s had with baseball: the play is very loosely based on a situation when he was a kid playing the game and he kept getting hit by foul balls, no matter where he would run.
Wright thinks the theatricality of the device used to hit the character with the foul balls is one of the reasons people enjoy “Foul Territory.”
“It’s so painful to watch, it’s just kind of funny,” Wright said in a recent interview, explaining that his piece throws determinism into question a little bit. “I don’t know if it’s a commentary, so much as a question. I think it’s a great mystery how much we participate in our own lives. You believe there’s more of a choice than he says there is,” alluding to the notion of free will.
Wright explained that he’s always been a fan of O’Connor’s work, and he’s happy to be involved with the Mile Square Theatre.
“You kind of feel like you’re part of the family,” Wright said, adding that the incorporation of sports into a stage production brings in a wider audience. “It’s a great way to bring people into the theater that might not normally come.”
Mile Square Theatre’s fund raiser, “7th Inning Stretch: All-Star Edition,” will play on March 15 at 8 p.m. at DeBaun Auditorium at Fifth and Hudson streets in Hoboken. Tickets are $25; $15 for seniors and students. A wine reception will follow to honor Lee Blessing. For more information, call (201) 216-8937, e-mail boxoffice@debaun.org, or visit www.milesquaretheatre.org. Comments on this story can be sent to Mpaul@hudsonreporter.com.