LA-based playwright Jami Brandli is a longtime LAFPI Instigator who we’ve heard from before as Guest Blogger and on Alyson Mead’s Podcast, “What She Said.” (We miss you, Alyson!)
And we’ve been a fan of Jami’s and her beautiful play “O: A Rhapsody in Divorce” for a long time now. We’ve followed it over the years and are thrilled to see it’s now receiving a world premiere at LA’s Outside In Theatre.
Not a spoiler alert: This is a play that’s a modern, femme re-imaging of The Odyssey, which of course is a story about… a journey.
We love that.
But as playwrights, we were also curious about the journey of the play itself, from inception to this beautiful production, directed by Jessica Hanna. I mean, sometimes the journey is much longer than expected, right?
So we were delighted to listen in to a Playwrights Union Podcast where, in part, Jami and Jessica talked about just that. A lightly edited transcript of an excerpt is below. (Thank you, Jami for sharing!)
Jami Brandli: And where do we start?
At the end of 2015, [Jessica Hanna] and I both experienced the life change of our marriages disintegrating. And we both began a couch hopping odyssey throughout Los Angeles. Mine lasted about six months and Jess’ lasted two years. We started talking and basically the conversation started from there!
At the time, I was very much in the world of my play, “BLISS (or Emily Post is Dead!)” where I take Clytemnestra, Medea, Antigone, Apollo, and Cassandra and I put them in 1960, New Jersey. So Jess and I met up for drinks around the holidays and talked. And then I sent a late night text that said, “What about a female Odysseus play?” And Jess was like, YEAH!
But I was in this emotional storm. So I wrote a lot ideas down.
Meanwhile, over the course of next couple of years—especially in 2018—I wound up having a few productions and one of them was “BLISS (or Emily Post is Dead!)” in LA in the fall of 2018. But before the production, the Playwrights Union Challenge came up in February—where you write a play in a month. And I was like, You know what? I’m going to write this play!
I probably wrote half of “O: A Rhapsody in Divorce” in February. But I was determined to finish the play by June 2018, because too many signs were out there. Like people that I knew were having problems with their relationships. And Jess was super energetic.
And so, I finished the play and the very first reading of this play was in June of 2018 for Playwrights Union’s First Peek Reading Series.
Jess directed it. Donna Simone Johnson, an amazing actor, was in that reading, and Donna is in the production now.
And then this play went on its own odyssey, if you will. Truly its own odyssey of getting workshops and then readings and an almost-production at Sacred Fools in 2020.
Then we had a big development opportunity with Inkwell Theater in 2023, which gave us three weeks with Jess as the director. And then finally it landed at Outside In Theatre, but there was a delay in the opening. But you will see that Andrew Brian Carter, who is in the production, has been in several of these readings.
It’s been an amazing journey. And so I’ll pass it to Jess.
Jessica Hanna: So we’ve had a lot of actors come in and then tap out.
The generosity of all the actors over the course of what is now almost eight years has contributed to the evolution—the development—of this play. They are in the DNA of this play forever.
After the Inkwell workshop, in 2024 we did a workshop at Outside In in 2024 in a way that I’ve done now a couple times with new plays. Over the course of a week, we did three full days of work, but with time in between for playwright to write. Each day we had an entirely different cast and they were all “new play” people.
We were like: Let’s have conversation around this. Let’s read. Let’s talk. Let’s ask questions. In my opinion, working that way gives the playwright a chance to hear their words coming out of different mouths over the course of a week. So know if an actor keep saying a line in that way and the playwright doesn’t want them to, then the playwright needs to look at that line. As opposed to, me—the director—thinking: Oh, I need to give that actor a note.
This kind of workshop really keeps the focus on the play, as opposed to on day three, the actors are really getting into it. That’s a different kind of workshop.
For this kind of workshop we wanted to work with actors who come in and read a part but also hear the whole play and want to talk about it and want to give to this process. Can you come into a room and be part of the collaborative effort around a discussion of what are you hearing in this play? How is that coming out of you? Did you get that off the page? What are the ways that you can help a playwright? Because that’s the gift, to help the playwright to hear the play they’ve written.
Go Here to Listen to the Complete Playwrights Union Podcast
“O: A Rhapsody in Divorce,” written by Jami Brandli and directed by Jessica Hanna, runs at the Outside In Theatre in Highland Park through June 16. For more information and to purchase tickets go to Outside In Theatre (and use Discount Code PIE20)
