Stage Notes Courtesy of the Hartford Stage Website

You've created a portrait of Hepburn that shows her great strength and determination, as well as her vulnerability and doubts. How did you sift through all that has been said by and about Hepburn to fashion your play?

Approaching Tea at Five initially was monumental in scope. Considering the existing plethoric data on Hepburn, my preliminary research was to simply gather historic facts (birth date, schooling, marriage, professional credits, etc.) After that initial stage was completed, my attention turned to Hepburn's relationships: family, professional, and personal. This part of the process continues to fascinate me, especially when exploring Hepburn's relationships with the men in her life, her father and deceased brother Tom in particular. After coupling the factual and emotional histories, I then began assembling the basic structure for Tea at Five, setting the play in Fenwick and depicting Hepburn at two significant stages in her life. My chief commandment with this project has always been to honor Hepburn's perspective with every word. Whenever disputed facts and events occur (which is at times frequently), Hepburn always trumps. Whatever she says goes, even if not altogether accurate.

In your play, Hepburn talks a lot about a Broadway and a Hollywood that don't really exist any more. Do you think she is the last of a certain kind of actor, a certain kind of star?

To suppose that Hepburn is a certain kind of anything would be doing her injustice, because there simply is no other "kind" like her. Then or now. In my opinion, the best thing that ever happened to Hepburn was her early ousting from Hollywood and being branded "box-office poison". She not only survived what was perhaps the most public and deliberate blackballing in entertainment history, but she came back more powerful and iconoclastic than ever. And for a woman? In 1940? In Hollywood?! Hepburn knew she'd never be offered choice roles because of her seven-flop track record (not to mention that watching an actress in her mid-thirties on film was the Hollywood equivalent to being at a shiva) and yet, Hepburn still never compromised. If there was a role she really wanted, she'd buy the script before any studio had the chance, walk over to Mayer's office and negotiate terms. Her terms. Broadway and Hollywood may continue to change with time but Hepburn will undoubtedly always be Hepburn.

Part of the fun of the play is all the references to Hartford and Connecticut. You grew up in this area-was that part of the fun in writing it as well?

I have yet to experience the words "fun" and "writing" in one occurrence but that's preferably a topic for my analyst. I was actually surprised by the geographical similarities I share with Hepburn. We both were born and raised in Hartford. We both spent summers in Old Saybrook (my mother's family owned a house in Indian Town.)

What significance does the title of the play Tea at Five reflect in regard to the life of Katharine Hepburn?

Throughout my exploration, the title of the play continues to reveal the Hepburn family structure. As Hepburn recalls, they would gather together daily, inviting some of the most prominent and influential people over for tea (doctors, artists, writers, inventors, politicians, etc). Anyone who was doing anything daring and remarkable was more than welcome because as everyone knows, the one thing the Hepburns simply could not tolerate was uninteresting people! However, other sources indicate that the gathering was not necessarily so voluntarily agreeable. According to Barbara Leaming's biography of Hepburn, she writes that Hepburn's father demanded that she had to be home every day in order to serve tea at five, a sharp contrast to Hepburn's recollection. Others claim the Hepburns did have tea at five early on, but stopped the tradition the death of her brother Tom. And then there are still others who insist the Hepburns never had tea at five, they simply liked to tell people they did. Such drama. Over tea!

You wrote this play specifically for Kate Mulgrew. As you continue to work on the play, how does writing for a certain actor influence its development?

Immensely. From the very first tap on my keyboard, I was not only writing dialogue for Hepburn, but was simultaneously custom-tailoring the role for Mulgrew. So the image I had in my mind was Mulgrew as Hepburn, which would help my writing one day and then hinder it the next! What I find most interesting about working so closely with Kate, is that while we both have been essentially re-creating Hepburn for the past year, our individual study differs to the point of complimenting one another's analysis. Kate continues to be my primary source of inspiration. From her remarkably detailed and precise exploration of Hepburn, to the natural simplicity of how she smokes a cigarette, I become further immersed into the soul of the character through her. I would never have even attempted this project had it not been for Kate Mulgrew. One-person plays have their unique rewards and challenges for an audience, for a performer, and, I suspect, for the author.

What have been some of the rewards and challenges you have found in this one-person format?

Well, I think it's implicitly more challenging to write a play like Tea at Five because the basic art of conversation is limited to only one character. From the onset, the most important thing Artistic Director Michael Wilson stressed during our collaboration is what he calls "the engine" of the piece, meaning what moves or motors the play forward. And attempting to create that mechanism while providing the audience with information through one character is difficult, because it has to be done quite inventively so that the script is not just a random rambling of facts. There are presently sixty-two other characters besides Hepburn in Tea at Five (although thankfully unseen and unheard). My job as playwright is to make them just as alive and present as the woman you'll see on stage. That's the challenge. My reward for writing this one-character play? I get to have it directed by the ultimate master of the format: John Tillinger. What's so exciting for me is that I finally get to sit beside this man whose work I have enjoyed since I was a schoolboy.