“I pitched four or five ideas and we landed on the Pirate show.”
Central Coast writer Ben Abbott makes it sound so easy to create a new play that will entertain audiences accustomed to enjoying the fine-tuned shenanigans available year-round at The Great American Melodrama in Oceano.
His two-act comedy The Piratess is playing now through April 25 at the professional playhouse, known for its skillful performers who also serve up a menu of munchies, sweets and comfortable drinks to patrons who like to have a bite while they relish a rousing evening of entertainment.
“The naval theme may have come from my love of the Horatio Hornblower books,” Abbott adds, but he’s quick to note that “the one thing all of those pitches had in common was strong female leads.”
Although the Melodrama has produced some of his plays before, this is the first time it hired Abbott to write a completely new show for its season. He sat down a year ago with Melodrama artistic director John Keating to discuss ideas, and it didn’t hurt to know that veteran Casiena Raether would be returning to the Melodrama stage for the season.
“She was in my first two shows [Grave Mistakes and Shut Up, Sherlock],” according to Abbott, “and she is just such a force of nature on stage. So it was exciting to write with her in mind.” Reather took on the role of, you guessed it, The Piratess.
Abbott says writing strong independent female characters is a natural “because that’s who I’m around all the time.”
He also is quick to give credit where credit is due in the process of creating a new show. “I did have help along the way,” he says. “I had two development workshops in the fall that were invaluable. Both of those groups were really amazing.” The groups were comprised of students from PCPA and the Cal Poly theatre department.
“It makes such a difference to get those eyes on a new play,” he says. “They really helped me get into the details and flow in a way that you just can’t do on your own no matter how much time you spend.”
The staff at the Melodrama came through as well, he says. “A lot of the polish comes from Eric Hoit’s directing. He’s an incredible collaborator and he knows his way around comedy like no one else.”
Abbott says he was only minimally involved in rehearsals for The Piratess, but that he and Hoit were in communication throughout.
“Eric and I would make changes as needed,” he says. “I think they did a fantastic job.”
He says he is delighted when a bit of action exceeds his expectations, using as an example another talented member of the cast who plays Commander Beaumont. “Jeff Salsbury has a way of delivering lines that I can never anticipate, so even though I write with him in mind, it’s always better than how I imagined.
“I could not ask for a better cast,” he continues. “I’m just beyond grateful to have such talented people to play with. Many of them have been in my other shows and I just can’t get enough of them. The one person I hadn’t worked with before was Audrey Cirzan, and she was just a gift.” Cirzan plays a refined woman who isn’t afraid to strike out on her own . . . actually considering becoming a piratess herself.
One slapstick bit he wrote into the second half of the show involves the characters juggling several vials of magic potions between them that, of course, have different effects on each one.
“The potions bit was a blast to write and probably a nightmare to stage,” he laughs. “The first potion was always part of the show, but once I started playing with what other potions there might be and what combinations could be used and who could get which one, the farcical possibilities really opened up.
“I know it took a lot of work and they did such a great job with it,” he continues. “It would be so easy to do that scene badly. One reason it works as well as it does is because of Eric’s obsession with having a consistent internal logic . . . But that attention to detail is what makes it work.”
Abbott has written several plays that have been produced at venues around the Central Coast—and the rest of the country. His play Buddies, “a bromantic comedy,” just closed a run in Virginia, and his “haunted rom-com” Grave Mistakes is being produced in Redding later this year.
Santa Maria Civic Theatre is producing Grave Mistakes in August as well, and a high school in Santa Barbara County is producing Murder Mystery, Mystery Murder that was previously produced by Paso Robles and Arroyo Grande high schools.
But he’s not resting on his laurels. He’s graduating from Hollins University this spring with an MFA in playwriting. “My thesis is a time-bending one-man show that I will be looking to produce somewhere,” he says. He also plans to write and direct a vaudeville review for the Melodrama this summer.
To top it all off, Abbott just began teaching theatre classes at Cal Poly, with plans to direct an original piece there in the fall. And oh, yes, he continues his acting in addition to writing. He has played the adult Ralph in SLO REP’s productions of A Christmas Story for at least the last four years, and is scheduled to appear as one of only three cast members in The Lifespan of a Fact there next month.
With so many succcessful shows under his belt, he can’t seem to get enough of working with the Melodrama, however. He and Keating have plans to talk about another new show, maybe to debut in 2027. “I hope there is,” he says. “As you can probably tell, I have such a great time working with that team.”
Abbott is proud of writing The Piratess, but understands that staging productions is a collective venture. “Theatre is a uniquely collaborative art form, and I have had so many great collaborators on this play, from my classmates at Hollins who helped me with my first draft, to the folks at Cal Poly and PCPA who helped develop it.
“Finally, Eric Hoit, the designers, and those wonderful actors injected it with life and energy. It is such a privilege to work with these people. We had a great time making it and—unless everyone has been lying to me—people will have a great time seeing it.”