A Sailor’s Story

Wendy Rolfe Evered will perform a staged reading of Charles Evered’s new play, ‘Adopt a Sailor.’

By: Susan Van Dongen
   The concept of "adopting a sailor" for a couple of days during Fleet Week might strike some as an invitation to trouble. Wouldn’t the sailor want to brawl like Popeye or drink and swear like Jack Nicholson’s character in The Last Detail?
   Princeton resident and actress Wendy Rolfe Evered says these images couldn’t be more stereotypical. Sailors — and soldiers, airmen/women and Marines — are just regular people, and are probably lonely from being away from their homes. Married to award-winning playwright Charles Evered, she became a Navy wife when her husband joined the Naval Office of Information shortly before the outbreak of the "war on terrorism." Suddenly, she and her spouse were part of a "family" that extended from sea to shining sea.
   "Before I was married, I’d always known when the sailors were in town during Fleet Week in May — you couldn’t miss them," Ms. Evered says, acknowledging that she wasn’t part of that world yet. "There really is a program where you adopt a sailor. You can do a few things for them. You can take them out to a fancy restaurant or to a show, or you can just do their laundry. Usually they just want to be comfortable, meet people and have a nice warm meal. Most of them haven’t been to New York, so I think they have a really good time, usually. It happens in every big town that’s on a coast, including Portland (Ore.), my hometown."
   Now Ms. Evered understands what it’s like for young men and women to be separated from their parents, for husbands and wives to be apart and, of course, children wondering when Mom or Dad will be back on shore. Bringing a sailor into your own life is a way of saying, "You’re family and we hope you’d do the same for us." And since the extended Navy family is so diverse, "adopters" might learn quite a bit from their temporary charges — and vice versa.
   That’s the basic idea behind Mr. Evered’s new work, Adopt a Sailor, which will have a staged reading starring Ms. Evered at the Arts Council of Princeton’s conTEMPORARY Arts Center Dec. 14. Touted as "a play about blue states, red states and all the colors in between," the story involves Patricia and Richard, a successful and hip couple from New York City who inadvertently adopt a sailor during Fleet Week. The young man who hails from Turkey Scratch, Ark., changes their lives forever.
   Although she has her own "demons," Ms. Evered’s character, Patricia, runs a successful gallery. Her husband, Richard (played by Scott Cohen), is a filmmaker, an auteur — a little pretentious but funny and warm. Months before, Patricia was encouraged to adopt a sailor by a friend but she forgets that she has done so, until the sailor (simply named "Sailor," and played by Brian Slaten) arrives at their place on the Upper West Side.
   "It’s a very interesting meeting of three different worlds," Ms. Evered says. "The play speaks a lot about service, in the way that the sailor is part of something bigger than himself. Richard and Patricia live in a pretty insulated world, although she is more open minded. She’s curious about her guest’s life, his hometown and why he does what he does."
   The couple discovers that, although the sailor is basically a small town guy, he’s much more intelligent and centered than they imagined. He’s the balancing point between the two of them and their ideas, which are farther apart than they care to acknowledge.
   "The other side of the story is about Patricia and Richard’s marriage," she says. "The sailor’s arrival forces the couple to be honest with each other. There’s a lot of angst between them, and they argue in front of the sailor, which makes him feel quite uncomfortable. They argue about what the sailor’s commitment is, why he’s in the Navy and whether his military service makes sense. Patricia is being very supportive, whereas Richard can’t begin to imagine what it’s like to commit to serving."
   He argues adamantly with the sailor, scolding the young man, saying that the United States government is just using him, paying him little money for putting his life on the line. Patricia disagrees.
   "We’re living in a time in history when people have been forced to live so close together while at the same time doing everything they possibly could to remain so entirely apart," she says in the play. "It’s a precarious, diabolical conundrum. When the bow breaks, it’s going to get ugly and worse than that, it’s going to be barely perceptible at the same time."
   Perhaps in creating Patricia’s monologue, the playwright was merely reporting on his wife’s philosophies about volunteering. Ms. Evered says she’s moved many, many times but the one way she’s stayed connected was by doing various kinds of volunteer work.
   "I think the world would be a much happier place if people volunteered more," she says.
   The concept of Adopt a Sailor began in 2002 when Andy Breckman, the creator of the cable TV show Monk, commissioned Mr. Evered to expand a brief version of the play. It premiered at the Brave New World Event at Town Hall in New York that year. Since then, the play has been read and performed by the likes of Matthew Modine, Bebe Neuwirth, Liev Schreiber, Eli Wallach and Sam Waterston.
   Adopt a Sailor will have its New York premiere in March 2007, produced by Unofficial New York Yale Cabaret, in association with Charles Rucker, at the Laurie Beechman Theatre in the Westbank Café. Mr. Evered will direct. The play will also be published in the spring by Broadway Play Publishing.
   Ms. Evered took a break from the theater for a while to raise the couple’s children, but was recently named Artist in Residence at the University of California-Riverside’s Palm Desert Graduate Center. She’s originated roles in Mr. Evered’s Visiting (to become a short film in fall 2007) and his play The Shoreham at the Black Dahlia Theatre in Los Angeles, where she co-starred with Eric Stoltz. She also created her role in Partial Objects by Sherry Kramer at Mill Mountain Theatre in Roanoke, Va.
   Mr. Evered is well-known in his home state of New Jersey. Regionally, theatergoers might recall his play Celadine at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick. Amy Irving starred in the 2004 production. Mr. Evered’s other plays include The Size of the World, Ted’s Head, Boston and Looking Again. Last year, the NBC television network picked up his pilot for a situation comedy, which Mr. Evered is polishing in California while Ms. Evered watches their two children, Margaret and John. A Rutherford native, the versatile playwright has also recently completed an episode of Monk titled "Mr. Monk and the Leper." It’s set to air on the USA network Dec. 22 at 9 and 10 p.m.
   Her husband will be back in Princeton by then, but Ms. Evered says they don’t get cable. So, for a Christmas gift, they will stay at the Nassau Inn — their favorite place in town — and watch it there. Mr. and Ms. Evered met at the Yale School of Drama and have been married for eight years.
   Mr. Evered might have been drawing from his own experience in the Navy when he began to imagine the sailor. In a TIMEOFF interview from 2004, Mr. Evered acknowledged the dangers of military service but, for him, the benefits outweighed the risks.
   "I realized when I reached my 30s that I was living for myself," he said. "I wanted to do something for the greater good. Also, I come from a family of service people. My dad was in the Army Air Corps in World War II and my grandfather and great-grandfather were fire chiefs in Rutherford. Everybody told me I was insane for joining up. But it was the best thing I could have done as a writer. I met people I never would have met and went places I never would have gone."
Adopt a Sailor will be given a staged reading by Wendy Rolfe Evered at the
Arts Council of Princeton’s conTEMPORARY Arts Center, Princeton Shopping Center,
301 N. Harrison St., Princeton, Dec. 14, 7:30 p.m. Admission costs $6, $5 members.
For information, call (609) 924-8777. On the Web: www.artscouncilofprinceton.org