Ella

Hatcher Sheds Light on Beloved Songstress
An Interview with the Playwright

Florida Stage Producing Director Louis Tyrrell speaks with playwright Jeffrey Hatcher about the development of the new book for ELLA, which Florida Stage commissioned Hatcher to create.

TYRRELL: Jeff, you are well known for writing biographical plays and screenplays, among your many works. Frank Lloyd Wright, Pablo Picasso, and Giacomo Casanova come immediately to mind. What was there in the life of Ella Fitzgerald that was most interesting for you to delve into?

HATCHER: I was drawn to the fact that Ella is so revered, so respected, so loved that she seems to exist almost outside her biography. We don’t know her ups and downs as well as we do those of Judy Garland or Billie holiday. Ella was a very private person and she guarded her inner life. For all her talents, Ella Fitzgerald is still shrouded in mystery for most of us.

TYRRELL: While the musicians in her band take occasional parts in your play, are there unique challenges in writing for what is essentially a one-person play format?

HATCHER: A one-actor show puts a lot of stress on the performer. It’s like doing stand-up comedy. There’s no one else to toss the ball to. That’s not an issue with Tina, because she’s got so much passion and energy and focus. But I love monologue plays because they offer the actor a chance to play straight out to the audience and feed off their energy and responses. That more than compensates for the pitfalls.

TYRRELL: How is your story-telling affected, when building a structure and a rhythm for a play with as much music as is included in ELLA?

HATCHER: Technically, it’s like writing the book for a musical. You know that the dialogue is only half the story, sometimes less. You can go four or five minutes without a song, but not much more. Whether they’re aware of it or not, the audience is trained to expect the music to come in about that often. Also, you know you have to build little emotional cliffhangars that the song provides the release to. And those little cliff-hangars and releases all have to be part of a larger arc for each act, and for the entire show.

TYRRELL: With biographical works like ELLA, you begin, of course, with character as a starting place. But, are there common questions or ideas that move you into the telling of your character’s story, whoever they may be?

HATCHER: You always want to tell your character’s best story. That’s why Hamlet isn’t about the four years he spent at the University of Wittenberg. You want to unearth the most conflict and mystery that allows the audience to have an understanding of the character, perhaps even a perception they hadn’t expected. You don’t have to write a bio-pic kind of play – she was born, she grew up, she faced hard times, triumphs, flame-outs, come-backs, etc. You often just need to focus on one part of a life, as long as that one part tells you the whole story. The film Patton covers less than a year of General George Patton’s life, but it tells you all you need to know about the man and the world he’s part of, as well as commenting on such subjects as war, patriotism, ego, and a dozen other things. Ella takes place on the night of a concert that was supposed to be cancelled. In the course of the play we find out why it was almost cancelled, and why Ella decided to go on instead.

TYRRELL: With all of the possible ideas in the world for a play, how do you settle on what to write about?

HATCHER: People always ask writers “where do you get your ideas?” We don’t get them, they come to us. Overheard conversations, new items, bolts out of the blue, and – sometimes – producers call us up with ideas of their own. Getting ideas isn’t the problem. Knowing which ones are stageworthy is the key. My test is this: if, after a few days or weeks mulling over an idea, I don’t have at least a rudimentary sketch of a plot and characters and lines of dialogue, then something isn’t clicking, and it’s best to put that one aside. The best ideas, to my mind, are the ones that make you sit down and start writing immediately, as if adrenalin has been released in your brain.

TYRRELL: What are the challenges faced by playwrights writing for the theatre today?

HATCHER: The same as always: lack of money, commercial pressure, aging audiences, changing tastes, and competition from other media. But no one forced us to do this. As Mike Nichols said to me once when I was in a grumpy mood: “Ah, but this is the profession you have chosen.”

- Special thanks to Florida Stage Company. Re-printed with permission.

Ella