By Gregg Shapiro

Staff writer

Good Boys and True,” the new play by gay playwright (and Marvel Comics writer) Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, is currently on the main stage at the legendary Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. Although it takes place 20 years ago, the subject matter of the play is undeniably timely. A videotape of a pair of high school-age kids having sex begins making the rounds of a private school and then blossoms into a full-fledged scandal when other copies begin to circulate. When the source of the indignity is traced to a student at an exclusive private school, who also happens to be carrying on a same-sex relationship with a classmate, it has long-lasting and far-reaching repercussions on a family, particularly the relationship between a mother and a son.

Gregg Shapiro: Your play, “Good Boys and True,” is set in 1988, which seems like more of an innocent time, especially in terms of high school aged people. Why did you choose to set it at that time?

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa: A couple of reasons. One is that as I was working on the play, I realized that I was writing a play that was loosely based on my high school and my experiences at my high school. I was in high school in the late ’80s, so that felt like a good time to set it. In terms of themes about privilege and wealth, which are very alive in the play, it was a time when those kinds of issues were at the forefront. One of the characters mentions a quote from that movie “Wall Street:” “Greed is good.” It seemed like there was an emphasis placed on materialism and it felt like a slightly more soulless time.

GS: Yes, that post-Reagan era.

RA-S: That’s right. And you’re absolutely right; there was a sense of it being a more innocent time. Certainly in terms of sexuality being a more closeted issue. Now it seems like everyone has a sex tape. And with things such as YouTube…

GS: I’m so glad that you mentioned YouTube, because between that and myspace.com, in a relatively short period of time—20 years—there has been an amazing progression when it comes to video recordings and sex acts.

RA-S: Absolutely! And if it would be set in the late ’80s, it would be historicized enough so that it wouldn’t seem quite so ripped from the headlines.

GS: And yet it’s still so timely. There is a scene where Liz’s (Martha Lavey) sister Madeleine (Kelli Simpkins) refers to the students that Brandon (Stephen Louis Grush) goes to school with as the “sociopaths at St. Joe’s,” which reminds us that private schools of that sort are often the breeding ground for this kind of culture.

RA-S: Whenever I go back to my own high school, it feels like the rest of the world has changed and evolved—and not that my high school hasn’t, but it happens more slowly. And it puts an emphasis on the traditional values, whether they are good or ill, that remain fixed across time.

GS: That’s a great way to put it because there seems to be a sort of multi-generational code of bad behavior.

RA-S: Right. And what may have been allowable, and what the father might have gotten away with in the ’50s is something that, for various reasons, the son isn’t going to get away with in the ’80s.

GS: Gay-Straight Alliances, mainly at public high schools, started making the news during the ’90s and on into the 21st century. It’s probably no surprise that that there would be gay relationships among some of the students at a private school such as St. Joe’s. But would there have been a GSA at a private school? 

RA-S: I went back to my own experiences at Georgetown Prep, which was the name of my Jesuit school. When I look back on my time, we didn’t have any kind of group. I’m sure there were gay boys—I mean, I was one of them. But it was so secret and subversive. You really couldn’t talk about it. And the only way that you could really act out was in a very clandestine way. For some people, that relationship (Brandon and Justin in the play) feels like, “Oh, my God, the best friend/boyfriend would never be as out as he is.” And then other people ask why they are so secretive about it. 

GS: Justin (Tim Rock) uses the phrase “hiding and pretending.”

RA-S: That’s right. It’s clear that they’re play-acting, which is also a theme of the play—acting and being a certain way.

GS: Visually, the play has a sorted of muted tone, and then Liz’s sister Madeleine shows up and she’s a collector of outsider art, a wearer of vivid colors, and she’s also the play’s primary source of comic relief.

RA-S: I think you hit upon it. She’s a little removed. Everyone but her is intimately affected by the scandal. She allows us to have a little bit of distance to see this and she’s a little bit our way into the play. I wanted every character to have a kind of double that represents a different path that the characters might have taken. So Maddy is Elizabeth’s double. In terms of comic relief, it’s funny that you should say that—the actress playing the part was asking why she was so funny. My cheesy playwright response was that I feel like plays are a reflection of the writers and I am generally a funny person and I try to see the humor in every situation. Even when I try to write a serious play, humor creeps in.

GS: I think it’s necessary in the case of this play, because the subject matter and intensity it is so overwhelming, to have that component.

RA-S: Absolutely. It felt like she had enough distance that she could afford to have that humor.

GS: Not surprisingly, Cheryl (Kelly O’Sullivan) turns out to be the most sympathetic and likable character. Was that your intention?

RA-S: I definitely wanted her to be winning. I didn’t want her to be completely destroyed by the events of the play. And I wanted her to have some good old-fashioned ambition so that when Brandon approaches her, she makes the decision to go with him because she wants what he has. And why shouldn’t she? Why shouldn’t she want wealth, and success and stability? Ultimately, it trips her up, because she has no idea what his agenda is. But I also wanted her to be a spunky character, and I think Kelly’s doing such a great job, too. I wasn’t even sure, as I was working on the play, that that character would be an onstage character. In the first draft, she wasn’t in the play, but in the second one, she was. It’s interesting what characters force their way into plays, and she was one of them.

GS: Knowing that now, it’s interesting the way that the second act is bracketed by Brandon’s introductions to Cheryl and Justin. Why did you employ that flashback device in the second act?

RA-S: The play, structurally, wanted to have some strong forward momentum. It’s a plot-driven “problem” play in that a problem is presented in the first scene and it unravels and spools out from that. The only kind of opportunity to take breathers from that would be at the top and bottom of act two, and the flashback would be a way to ease us back into the world of the play. Initially, I planned to write a structurally sound play that moves forward linearly, and then once I’d done that, I thought, why would I put that restriction on myself? Why did I say, “No flashbacks?” And then I thought, “Screw it,” I’m going to put these in, and I did.

GS: Although it’s changed in recent years through collaborations with the About Face Theater Company, for most of its lengthy history Steppenwolf Theater was not known as a place where plays with gay subject matter or characters could be seen on stage. How did your play end up there?

RA-S: What I’ll say is that it does feel like it fits in with their season question of what it is to feel like an American. Because it does deal with big, messy, American themes of class and sexuality and creating your own vision of what you want to be. Everyone in the play has their own ideal of what they want to be or what they want their lives to be, which feels like a very American Gatsby-esque thing to do. Truthfully, even though there are two gay characters in the play and sexuality is an issue in the play, it feels less like a gay identity play.

GS: The play has a very cinematic quality to it. Are there any plans for a movie version?

RA-S: There’s been a lot of interest in it. But I was more interested and my agent was more interested in really doing the play before we give the movie part of it our attention. There is interest, which we’ll pursue, once the play has run its course.