"Keely and Du," the explosive new ripped-from-the-headlines abortion drama, was named one of the 10 best plays of 1993 by Time magazine. It may win other awards, but author Jane Martin will never go up to a podium to accept them. Nor will she come to Manalapan to see the Pope Theatre's Florida premiere production, opening Friday.
Why? Martin is a pseudonym.For the past 12 years, she has been writing plays, usually light-hearted comedies, frequently with insights to the female condition. Yet her identity and even "her" gender are a secret.
A year ago, Pope Theatre artistic director Louis Tyrrell saw "Keely and Du" at the Humana Festival of New American Plays, an important national showcase of premieres at Kentucky's Actors Theatre of Louisville. Like representatives of numerous other theaters worldwide, he knew immediately that he had to produce this compelling new work.
In the play, grandmotherly Du is a member of an anti-abortion terrorist group who helps kidnap pregnant Keely at an abortion clinic. She shackles the young woman to a bed in a dank basement, intent on keeping her captive long enough to force Keely to bring the baby to term. The two women while away the hours talking and sharing their beliefs. Over time, they grow closer, as terrorists and hostages often do.
Perhaps Martin's most impressive achievement is dramatizing the anti-abortion and abortion rights arguments onstage, with a surprising amount of balance. Although abortion is a subject which incites strong passions, Martin manages to walk a tightrope between the battle fronts. And rather than being mere mouthpieces for sides of an issue, Keely and Du are real characters.
So real and so balanced that audiences are often split on the script's attitude towards abortion. People see what they want to in the play, often a reflection of their own views on the issue.
"They seem to want to adopt those parts of the play that support their position," says Jon Jory, artistic director of Actors Theatre, the man who first staged the play. Describing the audience reaction at subsequent productions, he adds, "In Ireland, I think they thought it was a pro-life play. At Hartford, it was sort of like being at a pro-choice rock concert."
Jory frequently fills in as Martin's spokesperson, by default, because she refuses to come forward and speak for herself. Then again, perhaps she is speaking. There are many theories on Martin's identity, including the strong possibility that she is Jory.
The affable, bearded Jory has been answering and ducking questions about the mystery playwright for years. The increased attention brought about by "Keely and Du" has only intensified the search. Still, Jory obliges and patiently lists the most popular guesses.
"The theories are it's an Actors Theatre board member," he says, "Or that it's Susan Kingsley," a company actress who died in a car accident in 1984. Explaining the continued arrival of Martin plays, Jory adds puckishly, "I guess she writes now posthumously."
Others claim "that it is a group of writers who write independently or that it is a group of writers with a different one writing each play," he says. "Or that I suggest the topics and they write the plays. Or that I write the plays."
And how does he respond to those who insist on that last theory? "I think it's extremely kind of them," Jory says. "I can use whatever reputation I can get."
Jory has written plays under his own name, including his theater's annual holiday attraction, a wildly popular adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. As to what the Martin sleuths might gain from a computer analysis of his Ebenezer Scrooge tale and her abortion drama, Jory laughs and says, "I hate to say it, but I think you would learn that she writes better than I do."
Conveniently, Martin's business affairs are handled by Actor's Theatre managing director Alexander Speer. Only Jory claims to have actually spoken with her, director to playwright, and after their talks she apparently gives him whatever rewrites he thinks are necessary. He is very good at keeping a long-running secret, even brushing aside minor questions, such as whether or not she resides in the Louisville area. "These are not things I can tell you," he replies.
What she did permit him to say - he says - is that she wants to avoid the media attention that comes with being known. "She allowed as how that was all right to say, that she just doesn't want to deal with being a writer when she walks into a room."
The history of Jane Martin began when her first play was submitted to an in-house play-writing contest, open to the Louisville theater's staff members and their friends. "It was simply slipped under the door," says Jory. It was a wondrous monologue about a teenage baton twirler that became part of an evening of monologues called Talking With.
It was so good you almost don't want to question its origins, just hope that more of the same arrives soon. And it has. Several worthy stage works, including the Klan spoof "Coup/Clucks" and a second installment of women's monologues called "Vital Signs," have mysteriously appeared at the theater and been produced.
"Keely and Du," however, is hardly "more of the same." Instead, it is a genuine leap up in quality and dramatic power for Martin. "It's a straightforward, serious issue play, and that's certainly different from works she has done," Jory comments.