Richard Nelson tackles family, relationships and the 2016 election in “The Gabriels”
Richard Nelson's slice-of-life plays The Gabriels Trilogy are inspired by American politics
“America and Americans are perceived in cliched ways in much of the world today,” says Richard Nelson. “Understandably so, I guess.” The past year’s shifting political landscape is reflected in two series of plays by Nelson, focused on progressive families in the same small New York town. The Apple Family Plays, set between 2010 and 2013, followed events during the Obama presidency. Developed with New York’s Public Theater, Nelson eventually took the plays on tours to Germany and England.
“To watch a group of people struggle and try to understand and articulate their own frustrations and confusions is something that made audiences in Europe feel really quite sympathetic and empathetic with these characters. It really presented our country, I think, in…a different way for it to be seen. That’s what I’m hoping we have with The Gabriels, as well.”
The Gabriels is a series of three plays set during the 2016 election. The 90-minute plays premiered in New York, with the final installment opening on election night. The premise is deceptively simple: In their Rhinebeck home, a family discusses issues stirred up during the campaign, without arguing about right or wrong.
“This year’s election…was a very fraught and volatile event,” Nelson says. “It’s really people just trying to express and articulate to their own family their own confusions, frustrations or ambiguities and how these questions are within the context of a family life, of a personal life, of a professional life, of relationships…. And all of those things entwined together are one of the things that makes us human.”
Nelson developed both series as a result of hearing “a lot of conversations going on in my own living room [about] how people were thinking about and talking about our country. I wasn’t hearing those conversations expressed in any other way — not on television, not in the news.” His intent was to provide slice-of-life portrayals of two progressive-leaning families in present-day America, where politics is one among many facets of life explored, alongside personal, social, economic and familial issues.
“I’m not really a political writer in the sense I’m not trying to argue any case or make any point of convincing anyone of anything,” Nelson says. “The fact that politics are part of my characters’ lives — I think that’s pretty much all of our lives.”
The Gabriels Trilogy — Hungry, What Did You Expect? and Women of a Certain Age — runs in rep to Jan. 22 in the Theater Lab. Tickets are $49 each show, or $120 for full-day weekend marathons. Call 202-467-4600 or visit kennedy-center.org.
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