Nationally recognized playwright and screenplay writer William Mastrosimone.
By Dan Aubrey
Nationally celebrated playwright and Trenton-native William Mastrosimone was “never satisfied” about his 1985 drama Tamer of Horses, which is set to start on Thursday, May 15, at Passage Theater in Trenton, continuing through Sunday, June 8.
The play deals with a young married couple — educators Ty and Georgiane — and their decision to raise Hector, a ward of the state. The couple happened to be black, the young man white.
While the NAACP gave the white playwright an award and critics called it “stunning” and “a powerhouse,” the playwright was not persuaded, and has revisited the script for the Passage production.
“There was always something wrong. Some of it didn’t ring true. There were a couple of good moments, and it hung together. When I picked up the draft again — and this is the third draft — something just jumped out at me, and I was exposed as an amateur writer,” he says, holding himself to high standards: an attempt to nail stage illusion to reality, tale to truth. As the 66-year-old playwright talks the connections become clear.
“In the next draft, Hector escapes from the Trenton detention center. My father had a liquor store at Parkside Avenue. There was a detention center with a barbed wire fence. That got etched in my memory. And the kids used to call out, ‘Could you get me some beer?’ That gave me a big chunk of the play.”
Mastrosimone, who today lives in Newtown, Pa., lived near the Brunswick Circle area of Trenton where his father had a bowling alley. He says that at the end of the first act in the original production, Ty discovers that Hector is actually a perpetrator of a violent crime. Although Ty has a positive relationship with Georgiane, he decides to tell his wife that the boy is innocent. It didn’t work, the writer says.
“It shows that it’s a bad relationship. There was no hint of [Ty lying to his wife]. I’m married now, and know that (the situation) is really wrong.”
At the end of the new version, Hector tells Ty that he committed the crime, and Ty asks to be with his wife. Ty says that Hector did it, and Georgiane says they should call the police.
“Ty says, ‘It would be the right thing to do, and the cops come handcuff him, take him out, and he would do a little time. But I think we can have an influence on him and not call the cops,’” he says.
Georgiane has her doubts, but goes along. “No one has ever given her anything. She’s worked her way up. Now she and Ty put everything they have on the line at the end of Act One,” he says. “That’s what I want. Now they both risk their necks.”
Tamer of Horses was inspired by the playwright’s personal relationship with Lee K. Richardson and Ricardo Kahn, the founders and producers of the New Brunswick-based Tony Award-winning theater black company, Crossroads Theater. The three met as students at Mason Gross School of the Arts.
“They said that they would like to do a play by me. There was no specification. I said to Lee, ‘I have this idea of a play called Tamer of Horses,’ and told them about Hector. I said, ‘You know that I would like to comb all the acting schools and find a young black Al Pacino — I’ll write the script around his personal traits,” he says.
When the duo came back and said that instead of a black actor they found a young white one who was “street and menacing,” the playwright knew it was the right move. He wrote it to be about a black couple who take in a white kid.
The result was one of the biggest hits at Crossroads up to that time.
“Since their audiences were black and white, the discussion was the best that they had had. People said that it was beyond black and white,” says Mastrosimone, who believes the play is about human beings. “There is not one line in the play that says they’re black. I always insisted that they’re a black couple. In the play there’s no covert racial tension. That’s not what the play is about.”
What it is about is something going on in our culture.
“(Sen. Daniel) Patrick Moynihan once said in the 1970s that in the year 2000, our impoverished young people will rise up and punish us up for neglect,” the playwright says, citing the Harvard professor who served as a cabinet or sub-cabinet member of the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford administrations and authored the study “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action” (aka “The Moynihan Report”).
“I thought that was a very important statement. I think there is something pernicious that is destroying (young peoples’) minds. Civilization is at stake,” he says.
The play provides some clues as to what tools can be helpful in the battle for minds and souls. One is, Mastrosimone believes, is the power of literature to change lives.
“The great literature that people don’t read anymore,” he says. “That literature changes peoples’ lives.”
And the play has literary layers. The title of the play refers to Hector, a major figure in the ancient Greek epic The Iliad who is given the appellation “tamer of horses,” a metaphor for controlling the wild and powerful forces within himself.
“Ty tells (Hector), ‘Your name is not Hispanic. It’s really Greek,’ that there was a great hero named Hector, and tells him a little of the story. By virtue as having the same name of Hector of Troy, the character identifies with that. (First) he learns that (the mythic Hector) was great hero that put fears in his enemies. But then he hears that Hector was a good husband, a good father, and a good citizen,” he says. “For the first time in Hector’s life, he identifies with a good person. He’s not even aware of it; he identifies with the name. This experience also makes Ty go back to teaching. Ty’s idealism of facing open minds – this is one of the most meaningful moments in his life.”
Tamer of Horses, Mill Hill Playhouse, 205 E. Front St., Trenton, previews Thursday and Friday, May 15 and 16, opens, Saturday, May 17 and continues through Sunday, June 8. Performance times are Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., and Sundays 3 p.m. $30 to $35. (609) 392-0766 or passagetheatre.org.
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