Little Montgomery

A Message from Stephen

I’ve always been fascinated by the ways in which we try to find belonging in our lives. Whether it’s your co-workers. Your friends. Your family. An online community. I think that we just have this desire to reach out with the desire to be less alone. For example, I’m somewhat of an introvert, but I love being surrounded by people, but that doesn’t mean I want to interact with them. I used to live with eight other people in a small apartment in New York (yes, eight other people). And it wasn’t an accident, I tried to get as many people as I could into that apartment, yet even though it was my idea, I still didn’t want to hang out with anyone. I was known as the reclusive roommate who never wanted to party. I just needed that community around me though.

Before writing this play I was in the midst of going through hardcore writer’s block. I’m talking about the kind of writer’s block that sends you into hardcore debilitating depression from the likes of which it seems you will never recover from so you sleep all day because the thought of being awake is the worst idea you could think of. I pushed everyone I knew away because I didn’t want anyone to know what I was dealing with. I got off social media, I stopped texting people, I stopped answering the phone and going out. But the one person who refused to go away was my best friend. He would talk to me every day and forcibly pump me up with encouragement and love and sunshine and sparkles. He got me through it to the other side.

So when my writer’s block finally broke I was filled with this yearning to be around other people. But not only yearning, gratitude to my best friend for sticking by my side for two years of absolute misery. I had this new understanding of how powerful friendship can be. For Little Montgomery, I knew I wanted to write a funny play about a couple of girls who kidnap a celebrity. And I knew I wanted the play to have songs in it, so that celebrity should probably be some kind of musician. And that’s all I really knew. I usually leave the rest of writing to my instincts and see what comes out. And instinctually I just started writing all these people who were yearning for that friendship that was so important to me. Yearning for that belonging with other people. And how when they felt their friendship was in jeopardy it felt like the world was ending. Because we’re going to experience a lot of different heartbreaks and bad times in our life. Our significant others will leave us. Our family may decide not to choose us or want to stick around. But our best friends will be there.

If you take nothing else from the play, send a text to your best friend saying you love them.