Real-life couple performs Love Letters
On stage and off, Kathryn and Erik Hodges are in love, and the married Penacook couple brings that real-life emotion to Love Letters, a two-person show that explores the relationship of Andrew and Melissa through letter writing over the course of 50-plus years.
“It’s an unconventional love story,” said Lauren Shelby Douglas, who’s directing the piece for Hatbox Theatre. “It’s not high-energy, it’s not anxiety-driven — it’s a very kind show.”
Love Letters was written by A. R. Gurney and nominated in 1990 for a Pulitzer Prize in drama. The Hodges first performed it to limited, socially distanced audiences in September 2020 at Hatbox, during the brief period when the venue was allowed to reopen after being shut down due to Covid, only to be shut down again shortly after.
“Love Letters was very well-received critically, but it was lightly attended,” Hatbox Theatre founder Andrew Pinard said. “[I brought it back because] I thought the work was really strong, and it’s a powerful piece about keeping people together when they’re apart. … I’m not so concerned about ticket sales. This level of work deserved more eyes.”
This is Douglas’s directorial debut, replacing the previous director and offering a new perspective.
“Everybody comes in with their own insight, which is what you want — even though our previous director did a wonderful job,” Kathryn Hodges said. “She’s a youngster, and she does have her own vision.”
Douglas said she had never seen or read the play before, so she really came into it with fresh eyes.
She said it’s a subtle, understated play, with no grand drama — just a conversation between two people that starts in grade school and continues through war, the Great Depression, marriages and more, with ups and downs throughout the years.
“It’s not your average play in the fact that the actors don’t memorize their lines — they read from the script right on the stage,” Douglas said. “Gurney strictly had instructions not to memorize lines, [because he] wanted it to be like they were really reading these letters.”
There are no costume or scene changes either, which allows the actors to focus on how they’re emoting through their words.
“You don’t have to sweat the small stuff — you don’t have to learn the blocking [for example],” Kathryn Hodges said. “The lights come up and you start reading these lovely snapshots of these bygone times.”
The real-life couple has been together for 36 years, and Kathryn Hodges said they really relate to the relationship between Andrew and Melissa.
“They are very fond of each other, they are very much each other’s best friend, and that’s us in a nutshell,” she said.
Andrew and Melissa’s relationship, though, evolved during a very different time period, so understanding their characters was a process.
“As a warm-up for this production we did a little exercise where we reversed roles,” Erik Hodges said. “This play is very much written from the analogous male point of view [and] seeing the character from her point of view was an eye-opener. While the male just sails through [life] … [Melissa], because she’s a little eccentric and different, she’s penalized.”
The Hodges have been part of the local theater scene for decades; Erik Hodges started performing with the Community Players of Concord when he was 10, and Kathryn Hodges joined the Players when she was 20.
“Even though both Erik and I have a long history with community theater, we don’t often appear in the same show, or if we are in the same show our characters have nothing to do with each other,” Kathryn Hodges said.
Love Letters has been a special opportunity for them as actors, and it’s a unique play for audiences to experience as well.
“The show seems very, very simple, but it’s so much more,” Kathryn Hodges said.
Love Letters
Where: Hatbox Theatre, 270 Loudon Road, Concord
When: Friday, March 18, and Saturday, March 19, at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, March 20 at 2 p.m.
Tickets: $22 for adults, $19 for members, seniors and students and $16 for senior members. Tickets may be reserved by calling 715-2315 or visiting hatboxnh.com.
The future of Hatbox Theatre
It’s been a tumultuous month for Hatbox Theatre founder Andrew Pinard. The venue was unexpectedly served with an eviction notice from Steeplegate Mall Realty on Feb. 11; that notice was rescinded shortly thereafter. Pinard said in a phone interview on March 9 that he couldn’t imagine how he would have packed everything up and gotten out of there in 30 days.
Now, Pinard has faith that the verbal agreement that Hatbox made with the mall to stay put — and to extend the amount of eviction notification time — will be honored.
“We’re waiting for the mall to provide written confirmation. We expect that will be the case,” he said.
And while the news that Hatbox could stay came as a relief, it also served as a wake-up call.
“It was a very alarming moment in time,” Pinard said. “[We realized] we need to be thinking of our future and forever homes. We hope to stay in our current location for a long time, but we have to be pragmatic and look into other options.”
Even if the mall allows Hatbox to stay indefinitely, the theater company itself has been struggling since the pandemic started, which might force some changes anyway.
“The numbers are still not what they ought to be,” he said. “Things where people congregate — sports, concerts … are still not attended in the way that people expect.”
Pinard recently attended a meeting with fellow performing arts groups, and the general consensus is that most are not expecting to get back to even 70 percent of their typical audience numbers until summer 2023.
“From an artistic perspective … even though we’re starting to reconnect in person, there’s still a lot of concern,” he said.
Along with less income from ticket sales, venues are also dealing with increased costs. Pinard said he had about $7,500 worth of utility bills in two months, when revenue was “maybe $800, maybe $1,000.”
“We can only continue to operate a deficit for so long,” he said. “We’re in the hole, and every weekend we do performances, if we don’t meet a certain number of attendees, we continue to be in the hole.”
Pinard said he’s “cautiously optimistic that we’re going to make it through this,” and they’ve invested heavily in protective measures like UV filters to make sure patrons are safe and feel comfortable returning. But things are going to need to start improving fairly quickly.
“If this doesn’t come back within a year, we may not be able to afford to stay open,” Pinard said.
Featured photo: Courtesy photo.
