Voices In My Head Podcast Episode #304: Pete Peterson Wrestles With Frankenstein

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Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com. Where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. And by the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay, where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head.

My guest today on Voices in My Head is Pete Peterson. Pete, also known by his author name A.S. Peterson, is the author of the Revolutionary War adventure novel The Fiddler's Gun and its sequel Fiddler's Green, as well as a variety of short stories. As a playwright, he has published The Battle of Franklin, first produced by Studio 10 in 2016, and revived in 2017, and has also adapted a play, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which premiered to great acclaim in August 2018 for the 200th anniversary of the publication of the classic novel. He and his wife live in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is the executive director of the Rabbit Room and managing editor of Rabbit Room Press. Pete Peterson, welcome to Voices in My Head.

Hey man, I'm glad to be here.

I am so glad to have you here, and I just want to say to anyone listening that you— they may be wondering, why do you sound weird today, Rick? Well, I have a bit of a cold and I'm just getting my voice back, so I am just wanted to put that quick disclaimer out in case people are wondering what's going on with me today. But I am so glad to have you here today. I've enjoyed what I've had the opportunity to read, what you have written, and have enjoyed really the community that has been set up online, especially through the Rabbit Room Chinwag on Facebook and other places. So I'm just really glad to have this opportunity to sit down for a few minutes and pick your brain today.

Yeah, man, happy to talk.

Now, I've had a lot of writers on this show over the year, and I've had novelists, I've had songwriters, I've had film writers and comic book writers even. But in over 300 episodes of this show, I think you're my first playwright that I've ever had on. So I want to start out by asking— I want to start out by asking you, what do you personally love about the theater and what makes it unique from other art forms?

That's a great question. Um, well, let me see. What— I don't know, like, I can't honestly say that I chose theater as an art form. It kind of chose me. Years ago, I was in film school, so I always envisioned myself writing scripts. For feature films. And, you know, pretty not too far into film school, I got— I kind of fell out of love with that. But, you know, I did, I did learn a bit about the craft. And then, you know, my real love became novel writing and short stories and all that kind of stuff. And then, you know, a decade later, I just kind of found myself in a position where, you know, a local theater company asked me, you know, hey, would you be interested in writing a play? And I said, yeah, sure, because I I try not to say no to things when I get a good opportunity. And yeah, it just ended up being something I really enjoyed. It was a lot of fun. And I like to joke sometimes that people say, what do I like about playwriting? And as a novelist or, you know, an essayist or a poet, you know, you write your stuff and then you publish it and you just kind of release it into the world to deafening silence. And, you know, you never know or often you never know if anybody ever was moved by it or appreciated it. Sometimes, you know, you get feedback through reviews and stuff, but in general, release day is a big disappointment, you know. It's really kind of this weird, uh, this weird experience. So then I had the experience of playwriting in which you get to go to opening night, and even if the play didn't go off flawlessly, everybody stands up at the end and claps. And I was kind of like, oh, I like this. So anyway, it is really different. It's very different. And part of what I love about it, all joking aside, is that it's collaborative in a way that other writing art forms are not. Certainly screenwriting is often collaborative, but generally poetry and prose or fiction writing are not. And so, you know, when I've written a play, you know, I've had— I've been blessed to be able to work with people that I really see eye to eye with and have a great creative synergy with. And so it's a comfortable, safe space to work, and I can kind of put stuff out there and we can work through it. And invariably, whatever I'm left with at the end of the process is far better than what I could have come up with on my own, which is a huge, huge blessing and relief. Because, you know, when you write a novel It's kind of all on your shoulders. Yes, you have an editor, but, you know, ultimately it's all up to you. And one of the things that's been a real joy about playwriting is that it's so collaborative that I have a whole team of people, um, not just informing what I write, but like interpreting it in ways that I didn't see, foresee, you know. So, you know, I might write a character one way, and then when the actress embodies it on the stage, I'm like, oh, I didn't envision that. And that'll drive me back to the script to kind of write it in a way that she will be able to even more fully embody. And so that's just a really fascinating aspect of the art form that I enjoy.

Oh, sure. And that's almost parabolic in some ways, I think, when you think of the way that someone will look at parables and they're not as simple as, you know, everybody always says parables are like these really short, simple stories, but they may be simple in some ways, but they're very complex in that So many people can look at them and come away with a different thought from them and different ways to inspire. And so I actually, until you had said that about the different way the actors will respond and then the playwright himself will go back and respond differently because of the actor and the way they played it, that's fascinating to me. That's a great thing to think about.

And another thing about just the, you know, the art of writing a play is because what I write is not the final form that the story is going to take, requires a certain humility. You know, when I sit down and write my novel, I am in absolute control of what ends up on the page and what reader experiences, whereas as a playwright, it's not my job to control every aspect of the experience. It's my job to provide a framework and a set of tools for which a group of actors and a director and a set designer and a songwriter and all these other people can bring their craft to bear on my framework, and then that all results in the final process.

Hmm, that's terrific. Well, I want to ask you this question. You've written a couple of really well-reviewed plays, The Battle of Franklin and Frankenstein. So this question is, will you ever write a play that doesn't have Frank in the title? Oh, yes, yes, I will.

I have, and I am working on one now. That's the first play that I had produced. It wasn't the first play that I had written. I actually wrote another play, which I'll leave nameless at the moment, prior to that for the same theater company that, for various reasons, we just never ended up completing, but I hope to go back to it one day. And there was no Frank anywhere in it.

That's terrific. Well, that was not my real question, so I'll ask you my actual one that's not silly like the last one was, but I'm just curious about how the Frankenstein play came about. I had recently, actually in the last 2 years I think, was probably the first time I ever actually read Mary Shelley's novel myself. And I was surprised to find really how different it was than what I had envisioned through what Hollywood has portrayed over the years and different art forms. And I found it to be a truly fascinating and really deep book. I'd just love to know kind of how the play came about and how you came about to write it.

Sure, yeah, you're absolutely right. Most people's perception of Frankenstein is not the reality of Mary Shelley's book, and I, you know, for years have been a huge fan of the book for exactly those reasons. I was a fan of its philosophy, its philosophical questions, its sociological questions, its theological questions, far more than the basic science versus What is it, science versus, you know, the dangers of exploratory science kind of theme. Sure, right. But when we, Matt Logan and I, who was the director, Matt was the director of Battle of Franklin, and coming off the second year of that, he just said, hey, would you do a documentary? Because he had just seen He had just seen the version of it with Benedict Cumberbatch, which was showing in London, and it just opened, and was really dissatisfied with it. He said, "You know, I just thought there were some missed opportunities there. Would you be interested in maybe us doing our own version next year for the 200th anniversary of the publication of the book?" And I was like, "Heck yeah!" I can't think of anything I'd be more delighted to work on. I'm such a huge fan of the book. So that's where it came from, and then I immediately went home and read the version that he had seen in London, and I was just, I was kind of appalled by how vapid it was. Like, just, it was not a good adaptation at all. It didn't do anything interesting, and I just thought, we have a real opportunity here to bring this story to another generation and really dig into some territory that I haven't seen explored before. And so that was what was exciting about it to me. To really get into theological questions that it wrestles with. And, you know, I was just— it was my good luck that I happened to be working with a director that was interested in that vision of it as well. So, you know, our adaptation is not what most people have seen before. It does vary from the book in a few interesting ways. One of the things we wanted to try to address was The fact that even though Mary Shelley, you know, as a woman had written it in the, you know, early 19th century, that was kind of, you know, at that time it was unheard of for a woman to write a book like that. And it was kind of, she was a, her mother was a famous feminist and, you know, she was kind of like blazing the trail for female writers at the time. But then interestingly, like none of the female characters in her book are interesting at all. They don't have any agency, they don't really do anything. So we really wanted to find a way to present the play in a way that gave some of the female characters a bigger part to play. And so, you know, Elizabeth, Victor's betrothed, was the way that we did that, and I really think it just enriched the play in a variety of ways by bringing out her character and giving her a bigger part. Play between Victor and— or adding her relationship with Victor and the monster to the relationship of Victor and the monster and her. It created this kind of interesting triangle. I don't want to say love triangle, that's the wrong word, but this triangle of perspectives that really brought the play to life, and that was a lot of fun.

Very interesting. Well, I'm glad to know that because since I haven't had the honor of seeing the play yet, I was kind of curious um, which angle you were coming at, because it seems like you could take a few different characters from that book. So, so really you have Victor Frankenstein and Elizabeth and Frankenstein's monster, or the person he creates. So would you say those are pretty much the three that the play revolves around?

Yeah, absolutely. It's, uh, it's definitely their play. They're the three main characters, you know, and we winnowed the characters back to as few as we could. I think there ended up being you know, 10 people or less in the production, and a lot of those are just kind of bystanders in the crowd for certain scenes. But yeah, it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. That's great.

I'm curious because you mentioned it, what were some of the theological questions that you personally found interesting to deal with in writing this play?

Yeah, well, I was fascinated by the idea that We are mankind as a, you know, we are fallen beings, like we bear the curse of the fall. So nothing we do is perfect. Only God creates perfect things. So then I was fascinated with this, this man, Victor Frankenstein, who was, you know, trying to play God and creating a life form of his own in his own image. So, you know, in the same way that we're created in God's image, we bear a lesser version of God's image and a fallen version of that image too. So then if that fallen image creates something else in its image, you've got like this another, this, this additional, uh, layer of removal from the primary image of God. And so I was just fascinated by wondering like what would that creature be like? Like how would it be flawed? How would it respond to its creator? And you know, because like we We're products of a perfect creator, and here the monster is the product of a very imperfect creator. So in that context, what would his relationship with his creator be? Because it can't be the same way that ours is. And one of the big conclusions I think that the play draws is that, and the monster points this out, is that God was willing to step into his own creation and redeem it. But Victor is not willing to redeem his own creation. He's only willing to hate it.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, so there was a lot. And then in addition to that, I think there's another layer too of like, how do we treat or how do we handle the gifts we're given and the way that we present our creative work to the world? You know, so there's a sense in which if I write a book, it's part of my job to love my book and give it its best chance in the world because it's a product of the spiritual gift of writing. Lighting that I've been given by my creator. And so then Victor, you know, his creation, his creative expression in the world, this thing that he makes, he chooses to hate it. And the result of that is that the thing that he created ends up destroying him. You know, and I think there's a lesson for artists in that, you know? Like if we create something and then we try to disown it and like, you know, don't treat it well and don't treat it with the love that it deserves, You know, it's going to come back and it's not going to love us in return. Anyway, there's just, there's a lot of interesting angles like that in that book that I think were there. I don't like, I think Mary Shelley, she wasn't, she was not a subtle writer. If you read the book, you know this, it's very dramatic. And I think there's a lot of, there are a lot of layers to that story that I don't know. I don't know that it's fair to say that she didn't realize that they were there, but she chose not to focus on them. And so it was interesting to me to go into the story and tease out some of those hidden layers that we don't often see in popular adaptations of the story. Sure.

Well, that's, you know, it's very interesting you make that connection and thinking about the Victor being a created being trying to create another being. I wonder if sometimes, I love What you were just saying about the writing process, did it, did it feel like ever to you, or does it feel like when you're adapting someone else's work, are you scared that what you're creating is going to be the monster that you hate?

Oh yeah, oh absolutely. We had this discussion with my wife over and over again just during the process of adapting Frankenstein. Like, you know, I'd finish a new draft and I'd come home and she'd say, well, how did it go? And I'd be like, oh my gosh, It's so bad. It's so bad. Like, I'm gonna be ruined. Everyone's gonna hate this, you know. And I would realize as I'm saying it, I'm being Victor Frankenstein. I'm refusing to see the good in the thing and to work for its good. And, uh, you know, it didn't end up being a monster. It ended up being really good. But, uh, yeah, it's interesting the way that happens, that it's, it's impossible to separate yourself as the creator, um, from the story when you're writing about a story about a creator. Like, it's all wrapped up together in your mind, and it's kind of weird.

That's a really powerful perspective to think about, and I need to remember that myself as someone who creates music. And there's times that I feel exactly that same way. I've said to my wife as well, as we're leading up into the last couple weeks before I have a new album coming out, I'm like, "What if people are gonna hate this? What if I hate this?" You know? And it's interesting that To hear you say that, it's wonderful to hear, actually. I want to ask you, because we did both of us mention wives right now, and my wife's name is Jennifer as well, I'm curious, what part does she play in the writing of these plays?

I could not do it without her. I mean that very literally. I mean, she's more than just my moral support. You know, when I finish a draft, the playwriting is— this is one of the ways in which it's very different from novel writing, to me at least, because a novel is made to be read by a reader, and that's something I can do on my own. I can read it and know if I like what I've got. But a play is meant to be performed aloud by people, and so it's very hard to know if it's working or not until that happens. So when I finish a draft, I come home and print it out, and Jennifer and I sit at the table, and I'm like, okay, we divide up the parts and we read through it, we act through it out loud together. And that enables me to see where, oh, like, this isn't— this relationship isn't working, these story beats aren't hitting the way that they need to, this scene isn't landing the way it's supposed to, and oh, we've got to write another scene here so that this one in Act 2, you know, goes off the way it's supposed to. And those are things that are very difficult to see until you've heard it out loud. So she's a huge help. By the time, you know, we get down to rehearsals, Jennifer has read it more than anybody else, you know, including me— or including me, but other than me. And yeah, she's a real trooper about it because she reads the earliest, worst drafts and, you know, grins and bears it.

Man, what a terrific wife and helper in doing that. That's really wonderful, and I think that's probably something unique that a lot of people long for as creative people. So you're a very blessed person to have her to do that and kind of walk through that journey with you. Well, I want to ask you as well, I'd love to get your thoughts on this, because we have a culture that for a number of reasons music is very prevalent because music is, you know, basically so cheap. A lot of times People who make music have trouble making money because it just seems to stream practically free everywhere. Movies and TV shows are almost becoming that way. Things like Netflix, they're just, you know, kind of everywhere. So it seems like the main art forms that we ingest, even more than reading, tend to be listening to music and, and, and watching things. It seems like to me anyway. Yeah. And I'm curious because You know, something like the theater is a little bit more cost prohibitive. You actually have to, you know, get dressed up and go down to the theater, you know, and see a film. I'd love to get kind of your thoughts on maybe, I guess, if theater would be your preference, or what unique thing it might have to offer that the movies or other forms that we usually just kind of surround ourselves with, what it might have to offer to us that those things don't.

Yeah, man, I love theater, and the main reason is, and the reason I think it's so important, so unique amongst the sort of entertainment literary art forms, is that it's communal. You don't participate in theater by yourself. You know, when you go to a movie, the movie theater could be empty, and you can sit there and you can watch the people on the screen do their things and you are the only one that's experienced that. When you go to the theater, even if there's nobody else in the audience, you're still not the only one in the room. There's still a troupe of actors on stage going through the story and, uh, experiencing it and feeling the emotions. And there's a big difference between, like, if you go— if you go to a movie and watch a scene in which an actress breaks down into tears and completely falls apart emotionally on the screen, that's one experience, and it's a completely different experience to be in a theater and see a woman, an actual woman, 10 feet in front of you do the same thing. It's kind of inescapable, you know, you're complicit in what's happening on the stage because you're in the same three-dimensional space with these people. I think that's also especially effective when things take place on stage that are violent, It doesn't have to be like gratuitously violent like we see in a movie. It can just be kind of like abstract stage violence, but because you're in the room with this stuff that's happening emotionally, it hits us completely differently and we feel complicit in what's going on because we're really sitting here watching real people interact with one another. I think that's what's really different about the stage is that it's inescapably communal. It requires a group of people to sit around and interact with one another. And even if you're just the audience, you are still interacting with the actors on the stage. It's kind of— it's just a magical kind of art form. And it's really unfortunate that it is more difficult to partake in and that it's so expensive. But if you participate in theater for very long, you really quickly understand why it costs that much. And it's not because anybody's making any money. Believe me, actors are paid worse than musicians. You know, it's about how much it costs to put this on, like to build the sets and to rent the space and, you know, to sew the costumes and to write the play and all this stuff. It's an unbelievable amount of work. You know, somebody one time said that, you know, theater is, you know, one of the most complex art forms in our civilization because like a single play that's put on involves like 16 different individual artistic crafts. And so he's talking about, like, you know, you have the playwright, um, and hopefully all these people are working at the top of their game, uh, to present something that is, uh, astonishing. So, you know, you have the playwright, you have the director, you have the, the set designer, you have the sound designer, you have the lighting designer, you have the costume designer, you have all the individual actors doing all their individual things. You often have a songwriter, somebody scoring the music, the set, the production assistants and stage managers and all this. Like, it's so many people that are required to know such specific information and to do it at such a flawless level to make that story work that one time for you when you're in the audience, that it's this kind of magical gift that comes together to present you with a story. And I just think that's beautiful. And unlike film or a book or an album, uh, it's only done for this finite amount of time. You know, like Frankenstein ran for, you know, 2.5, 3 weeks, and if you weren't in one of those seats to see that gift while it was presented, then it's gone forever. I mean, there will be other productions, but they won't be the same production, and it's going to be different next time somebody does it. It's just, it's a fascinating art form.

Yeah, that is. And, you know, speaking of that, I'm wondering, is there any talk of this production maybe going on on the road or playing in different towns in the future? Or how does that work when you write a play? I'm very ignorant, unfortunately, of how that works to get sort of a play out into the world.

Yeah, unfortunately so am I. I don't really understand how that works. I've kind of committed this year to try to figure that out because we would love to see the play go on and have a life beyond Nashville. I know there's a theater up in, um, I think Grand Rapids that's going to be producing it this Halloween. Oh wow. And then there's been a couple other theaters that are interested, regional theaters. But as far as like actually putting this tour of our production on the road, uh, you know, it's a really hard thing. It just basically, I think, would require somebody with a whole lot of money to come along and say, hey, I want to invest in this. And, uh, you know, if I was— if, if playwriting and theater production was my number one priority in the world, I would be happy to chase that down. Unfortunately, it's just a thing that I do aside from a whole lot of other things, and so I don't know that I've got time to really go figure that out, which is a shame. But you know, if it's supposed to happen, it will.

Well, maybe when it comes to Grand Rapids, I'll try to get up and see it. It's a little closer than Nashville is to me these days. So where are you? That's— I'm in Springfield, Ohio.

Okay.

So it'd probably just be, I think, maybe a 4-hour drive or something for me. But, um, well, that's good to know though. So I'll, I'll just put it out there to anybody listening who has a lot of money and wants to finance this to go on the road, feel free. That would be a wonderful thing. And, and we have a great theater in my city here in Springfield, Ohio that it's actually the John Legend Theater, and John Legend, the singer, is from my town here and put a lot of money into it and gave our community a real gift in that people can affordably come and do different plays, and they're using it a lot more, so I'm grateful that we have it in our community. Maybe one of these days we'll be able to see your play coming into our city, one of your plays. I'd love for the chance to see that.

I am all for it.

Well, I have really appreciated hearing your perspective today and having you take some time. I have just, I think, two more questions I want to ask if you have time.

Sure.

And one has to do with your writing, but before I get to that one, I'm just curious what your thoughts are on old-time radio theater, because there was a time that in itself was a different art form. I've enjoyed just through some podcasts being able to discover a few of the old radio plays that really I don't think we hear much anymore. Every now and then there might be a, you know, a Prairie Home Companion type thing that we'll be able to hear, but nothing really on a regular basis. Were you ever a fan of, of, you know, finding some of the old-time radio theater type shows and being able to listen in?

I don't— I've never really paid that close attention to it. I mean, it's the kind of thing that I enjoy it when I encounter it, but I've never kind of gone out of my way to pursue it. I will say that, like, um, uh, you know, when we're workshopping a play, often we'll do the radio kind of production of it. What I mean by that is, you know, it's not staged. You know, we have actors just kind of walk up to the mic and do their part and then, you know, go sit down. So we get the we get the interaction of all the voices and some sound effects and some stage directions read, kind of like you hear on old radio productions. And that's always really fun, you know. Yeah, you know, and I have had a couple people suggest that we could, with Frankenstein specifically, that perhaps we could do an audio version of it that would be available. And I think that would be really fun. Um, yeah, that would be amazing.

Yeah, I'd love to hear that. That would be interesting. Yeah.

I really don't know. I'm two minds of it though, because like, you know, on the one hand it sounds really fun, and on the other hand, you know, part of what makes theater theater is its three-dimensionality.

Sure.

You know, so I try to think in the three dimensions of a stage. So it's not just about the words, it's about where things are positionally. And you're creating images on the stage that inform the story. And so you lose all that when you go into radio. So I'm a little hesitant about it because like with Frankenstein in particular, there's some things about the show that are very spatial that would be lost, and that makes me a little nervous. But, you know, I guess you take what you can get, maybe.

Sure, sure, would be an interesting idea for sure. Well, the last thing I have, it's not really a question, it's more of a thank you. And I've had the chance to read a few of your short stories online, and every now and then when I get someone on the show that I've admired their work, it gives me a chance to say thank you for what it's meant in my own life. There's one story in particular that I came across a few years ago that had, I had seen online, um, that you wrote. And I don't know if it was something that actually happened to you and you made into a story, or if it was just the way that you told, but it was about, um, the, the character in the story anyway, um, had hit a deer.

Oh right.

And the deer lay on the side of the road. And, and it seems like it's you writing that.

Yeah.

Um, but it's one of the most beautiful and haunting stories that I've ever read, as the person who hit the deer is just waiting, not knowing what to do as this deer is suffering and life is slipping away. And sort of ends with this prayer of, "How long, O Lord?" And I've referred back to that numerous times to various people, especially when they're going through some really difficult times, and allowing people to say it's okay to ask that question, how long? Yeah, Lord, it's okay to come at God that way. So, so more, more than a question, I, I just wanted to thank you for that story, um, in particular and what it's meant to me over the years. And, um, yeah, I just, I look forward to seeing more in the coming days. I appreciate what you do.

Yeah, you're welcome, and thank you for telling me that. That's actually— I've written that in response to The book Silence by Shusaku Endo, which is about Christian persecution in Japan. And, um, I'm actually glad you brought that up because I'm in the middle right now of adapting Corrie ten Boom's The Hiding Place for the stage. And, um, so I've been in the middle of really trying to think through the problems of suffering and how we encounter and respond to it, uh, because, you know, the latter half of that book is her in and her and her sister in a concentration camp during World War II. And this year we actually went over to Europe and went to the concentration camp, and it's just one of the most bleak, dark, emotionally powerful experiences of my life. And I've been wrestling with how exactly to get that on stage and in a way that's satisfying.

Sure.

And in a way that wrestles with those questions in a satisfying way and doesn't become trite. And so yeah, I actually need to go back and read that article that you're talking about because it occurs to me that I had already written some about those ideas and that might be helpful. So yeah, thanks.

Good reminder. Well good, glad I could help out there. Well, it has been wonderful to have some time with you today and as I say to all my guests every time they're on this show, thank you Thank you for being one of the voices in my head this week.

You're welcome. Thanks for listening.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or a speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit Spirit, you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.