The Story of The Bathroom

I was waiting for a friend outside a restaurant bathroom. She was having a wardrobe malfunction and ended up being in the bathroom for a while trying to fix the issue. I sat on a crushed velvet fainting couch just outside the bathroom and watched the people that came in and out, most pretty vocal about their family drama, relationship problems, after-dinner heartburn. Others offering fuel for my imagination with their silent brooding. Sure, some were just there to wash their hands, or use the other facilities, but many were there to air grievances, share gossip, tempt themselves with flirtations. The interconnected waitstaff, the regulars, the strangers. Status disappears in death and in bathrooms. We all have to go sometime.

This particular night was in the glory years before Covid, when masks weren’t a thing and making honest personal connections with strangers was easier. It was also in a unique time of many bathrooms being un-gendered, stalls, sinks, and powdering areas available and welcoming for all. It made some people uncomfortable. I guess it still does. Some older folks mentioned it as they left the bathroom, confused. Many opened the door and closed it several times, rereading the sign outside the bathroom. Several heartbreaks were unfolding, a bartender that seemed to have two women wooed, an old romance seemingly revisited, and always, always a gaggle of girls that travels in a wave of spicy perfume and crop tops. The most interesting characters though were the restaurant staff. Anyone that’s ever worked in the food industry knows the quick bonds and dramatic fallouts that happen between members of a restaurant family. It’s theater in itself. And familiar to anyone who knows the meaning of ‘sidework’ and ‘86.’ You’re in the trenches together and you are forever a good tipper after those days.

I sat and watched these fleeting little moments and started writing character descriptions in my head. The restaurant became a collection of every restaurant I’d ever worked, and the bathroom the place where each of these people could exist in the same reality. The seasoned bartender, the hopeful musician, the jerk food critic, the transient waitstaff. The things you see and hear in the privacy of a powder room; the comedy and tragedy lives on its own without needing a writer’s imagination.

The idea simmered for a couple of years and then one night I wrote the bolognese scene. It’s still my favorite scene in the play. In February, my husband gifted me an Airbnb stay, and I holed up in a tiny cottage in Seaside with the proper supplies (Kim Crawford and Modica Market shrimp salad), and the most agreeable editor I’ve ever known (my dog Tate), and over a weekend wrote The Bathroom.

A few months later an amazing group of folks assembled for a table read and a few weeks after that, auditions brought together an incredible cast and production team. And in just a short time, the show will be onstage at the House.

I’m so proud of what we are creating and so humbled by the incredible people listed here who are bringing the words to life. If you can, make plans to see The Bathroom,  July 21-23 at Storyteller House for the Arts.