Lee Blessing's 'For the Loyal' premieres in Minneapolis at the Illusion Theater

Born and bred in the Twin Cities area but now living in California, Lee Blessing is an award-winning playwright who annually returns to Minnesota for work and family. His latest play, "For the Loyal," was inspired by the sexual abuse scandal at Penn State University. It premiered Friday at the Illusion Theater in Minneapolis. We caught up with Blessing last Monday as he flew into Minneapolis for rehearsals.

Q: Welcome back to Minnesota. When were you last here?

A: We always come for Christmas. My wife, [playwright] Melanie [Marnich], has family in Duluth. And I grew up in Minnetonka. Plus, I come every year in the spring for a workshop at the Playwrights' Center. I lived in New York for 12 years and now I'm in L.A., but Minnesota is in my heart.

Q: Did you always know that you wanted to be a playwright?

A: I was 13 or 14 when the Guthrie came to town. That was a powerful event for me. I fell in love with theater and, from that point on, wanted to be an actor. I wrote poetry. I even went to Iowa for grad school as a poet. But five years later, I emerged as a playwright.

Q: What caused the change?

A: The more I wrote, the more I realized the kind of writing I did lent itself better to theater. I was never good at metaphors. But dialogue came extremely easy for me. And narrative, too.

Q: And you have written a play a year ever since?

A: Yes. That was in '79, and, if you stay highly focused, you can do that sort of thing.

: How does one stay focused?

A: My wife is much more disciplined than me. She was a copy writer in advertising for nine, 10 years. She sets an alarm clock, works for four hours until noon, then assigns herself X time to do Y work. To me, that's very impressive. I don't do that.

Q: Do you work on several plays at once?

A: Usually not. I admire writers who can juggle several projects at once. Not me.

Q: In fictionalizing "For the Loyal," you decided to have a female protagonist. Why?

A: College and major league sports exist in such a macho world. I thought it would be more instructive and richer if I looked at this through the lens of a woman. In a way, she's freer to say, "Wait a minute, you've got to protect this kid from this man."

The rest of the characters are all men, and they're there to inhibit her impulse to do something about this abuse. For the men, it's about their identities and jobs. For her, it's about something higher. In a way, this play is like a detective story, and she's the one with the least vested interest and has the perspective to look more critically at things.

Q: Does the female protagonist also provide you with a sense of exploratory freedom?

A: I wanted to write a play that's not a sequestered male thing. I've done enough of those. I wanted it to be about all of us. Major league sports are working hard to accommodate female viewers and audiences. Why shouldn't a playwright? It just seemed richer.

Q: Was she drawn from a particular character?

A: The person I found most fascinating in the Penn State scandal was the graduate assistant coach who happened to walk in on [Jerry] Sandusky, apparently in the shower with a young boy. I thought, what if he came home and told his wife? Again, this was 15 years earlier than actual history, so it would be in a much more unaware, more challenging time. What would she do? What could she do? At Penn State, the guy talked to his father first, then coach [Joe] Paterno. He turned it over to Paterno and did nothing more.

This play looks at the responsibility of each of us as citizens to call out wrong and bring it to authority.

Q: When you are writing a history-inspired work such as "For the Loyal," do you find yourself trapped by reality? Are there things that bind your creativity?

A: When I first wrote the play, I did it with Aristotle's unities of time and place and action, etc. It was a study in realism, with everyone in the same room. The play actually worked that way, but I couldn't stay ahead of the audience. People already are well-versed in the subject matter.

But then I went back at it, and now it's a realistic play for the same 20 or so minutes, then it breaks into this unreal narrative in which we enter the mind of the central character. Everything that happens for the rest of the play is what's going on in her mind as she explores a whole bunch of possibilities. The great virtue of such a structure, besides being much more fun to write, is that now the audience doesn't run ahead of the play. The play still has the ability to surprise.

Q: What's the most important thing that audiences should know about this play?

A: This is a very watchable play. I've had it done in readings in five different regions of the country. … The play doesn't take on the terrible heaviness of its subject matter. It has an exciting investigative feel. It's funny in places. It's not an ugly play, though much of the subject matter is. It involves us and entertains us.

I'm not saying that it's light or unserious, but there are ways of being serious. When I wrote "Down the Road," which is about a serial killer, I made a rule that there would be no act of violence onstage. The material is powerful enough. As a playwright, you have to create room for the audience to want to be there as they watch the show. As difficult as the material is, my play is not going to chase you out of the theater.

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390