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“I don’t know what other plays have grafting in them,” says playwright E.M. Lewis about Apple Hunters!, which makes its world premiere at Artists Repertory Theatre this spring.
Apple Hunters! is about two adult brothers, Paul and Eddie, and their two childhood friends, Don and Stan. After experiencing several heartbreaks and major life events over the course of the previous year, the four decide to go on an “apple quest” to find an elusive “lost” apple variety in Washington state.
Life doesn’t necessarily get easier for the characters as the play goes on: They deal with mental and physical health struggles as well as maintaining their regular lives. However, their friendship saves and aids them on their apple quest and in their overall life journeys.
The focus on male friendship is timely, as more and more “male loneliness epidemic” think pieces make their way into mainstream media. Director Zeina Salame tells WW she was interested in exploring “What is it to have a lifelong love story with a group of chosen family and a group of chosen brothers and the way that ebbs and flows because the demands of our lives get in the way of us having access to each other?”
The play has had readings as part of Fertile Ground and through Linestorm Playwrights, but this will be its first full production and wraps up Lewis’ six-year Mellon Foundation residency at ART. The playwright has been part of the rehearsal process since the start, and the play isn’t, as Salame says, “overly charged with my fresh take” as director.
“When making decisions, my primary compass is going to be listening to the text,” Salame tells WW. The playwright-centric development process is unusual for a full production and means the play is in flux.
While Lewis says nothing drastic has changed with the structure of the play since the start, things are constantly shifting. In fact, the script isn’t “frozen” or set until opening night. Audiences lucky enough to pop in for previews March 31 through April 3 may see actors with brand-new scenes in their hands—scenes which may have been rewritten that day. Once the play officially opens, the script won’t change, but audiences are seeing something brand new and developed right there in the theater where it’s performed, with a dedicated group of artists. While the full production team is new, the actors who play the brothers have worked with Lewis on previous readings.
Salame says the tech is “purposefully nimble” to accommodate that process—which not only suits the production, but also the play itself.
“The design elements are very purposefully in conversation with the themes of the play. They are also there as a part of the poetry of the conversation of the play,” she adds.
The main theme is friendship, of course—but also a sense of longing and searching, both practically for the apple and more abstractly within each character.
“This is a play that wants an intimate relationship with the audience and a simplicity of storytelling,” Lewis says. So the production team has worked together to create a shared experience that invites the audience in as much as possible so the relationships feel organic. The performance space—still in the future lobby of the theater—will use a “thrust” configuration where the audience is on three sides of the stage.
“This is a play that is connected to place,” Lewis says.
Audiences can expect a wholesome yet not saccharine story, not unlike the experience of eating a good apple. It’s also a play “connected to place,” as Lewis puts it—namely, a play connected to the Pacific Northwest. Apple Hunters! leaves us in a world that isn’t perfect, but is manageable due to the power of community and the strength of undying hope.
“There’s been great joy in the discovery together and we hope people will like the story that we’re creating together,” Lewis says. “We’ve been having a grand time making it.”
SEE IT: Apple Hunters! at Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., artistsrep.org. 7:30 pm Tuesday–Saturday, March 31–April 4, and Wednesday–Saturday, April 8–11,15–18 and 22–25; 2 pm Saturday, April 11, and Sunday, April 5, 12, 19 and 26. $20–$60.
