Devin Scillian is so gleeful about his latest project that "I can't quite put it into words," he said.
That's somewhere between embarrassing and ironic, he conceded, "because that's the playwright's job."
Yes. The playwright. The first play by the former WDIV-TV anchor debuts Sept. 24 at the Purple Rose Theatre in Chelsea.
It’s called “Bastard,” and if that’s not a word he peppered newscasts with during 29 years at Channel 4, “it just fits,” he said. The title may discourage some productions down the road, but he's focused on this one, fulfilling a dream he didn't even know he had.
The central characters are fading country rock star Jake Lambert and his buttoned-down brother, Beau, who’ve had little in common over the years.
Their mother’s death
reopens wounds and sparks revelations, but their reunion leaves room for laughter and, said director Rhiannon Ragland, will lead to a nightly question.
“It’ll be interesting to see who the audience thinks the bastard is,” she said, “and if they feel the same way at the end of the show.”
That's the intrigue of live theater, or at least one of them − and watching the production come together has been a series of welcome returns to Scillian's dramatic roots.
An artist inspires art
Scillian, 63, has an absurd number of talents, and the grace to downplay all of them.
He sings in a country band. Writes songs and award-winning children's books. At least began three novels, even if they've never made it out of his laptop. Does voiceover work. Appeared in three Eminem videos. And:
Has two more plays in progress, one of them a musical, in addition to the 36th season opener for Purple Rose, running through Dec. 20. The craft has taken hold, all because he had the good sense to listen to his wife.
Talking about a friend, sculptor Corey Scillian once said, "Everyone is entitled to their own story."
That took root in Scillian's imagination, and when it finally sprouted as Jake and Beau, he pictured them on a stage, not in hardcover or on a screen.
He'd started out at the University of Kansas as a theater major, and remained a department mainstay even after he discovered journalism. His larger roles included Thomas Jefferson in "1776," still his favorite musical, and head hippie Berger in "Hair," in which he did indeed do what that show is best known for.
"Well," he thought then, "I'll probably never be able to run for office."
Ad-libbing a new passion
Fortunately, that urge never struck him. When playwriting did, he realized that for all the lines he'd memorized, he'd never thought about how they arrived in a script.
Figuring out structure and pacing as he went, he concentrated on "writing a play that good actors wanted to be in, with juicy things to say."
Then he emailed it to actor and director Jeff Daniels, the founder of Purple Rose and Scillian's brutally honest songwriting buddy of almost three decades.
Daniels was boarding a transatlantic flight, with hours to potentially spend nitpicking.
"I was expecting five pages of notes," Scillian said, "notes" being theater-speak for wrong stuff the writer should change.
Instead, Daniels scheduled it for a table read, the first step in being chosen for production. That did bring notes, and they're still coming.
"Bastard" has six characters, with Mark Colson and Joe Kathrein in the lead roles as Jake and Beau. At first, there were seven, and Daniels wanted to dump two of them, so six is a compromise.
"This has been part of the education of Devin," Scillian said. Trimming one part streamlined the play, and also the payroll: at an Actors Equity theater paying union wages, excising one character and an understudy made a noticeable financial impact.
He's also learning what Daniels meant when rehearsals began and he said, "You have to be open to the idea that your play is only 80 or 90% written so far."
Each day on stage brings tweaks, said Ragland, 48. A shorter word here, a transition there, a fresh passage to emphasize a point.
What's unchanged is the title.
"When you see the play," she said, "you'll understand that it couldn't be called anything else."
As for Scillian, the former anchor, he can be called a playwright. File that under good news.
Reach Neal Rubin at NARubin@freepress.com.
'Bastard'
A World Premiere by Devin Scillian
Sept. 24 - Dec. 20
Tickets: www.PurpleRoseTheatre.org or 734-433-7673
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Ex-WDIV anchor has a newsworthy new role: working with Jeff Daniels
