After laughing at every page, he knew that the play had to be produced by the Bloomington Playwrights Project.
“Kalamazoo” opens the BPP’s main stage season 7:30 p.m. Friday.
BPP will also perform the play 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Oct. 2 through Oct. 4 and Oct. 9 through Oct. 11.
The comedy tells the story of Peg and Irving, two 70-year-old widowers who meet on an online dating site.
“It’s about how they can learn to move past their previous relationships and reengage with life,” Artistic Director Rabinovitz said. “They go through relationship problems many of the younger people do and in a very funny way.”
Irving, played by Ken Farrell, and Peg, played by local actress Kate Braun, have their first date at a Mexican restaurant.
After having too much to drink, they end up in a hotel room with tattoos and no memory of how they got there.
After waking up, the two start to talk more and begin fighting about religion.
Peg is an Irish Catholic woman from California, and Irving is Jewish and from the East Coast.
The rest of the play features more ups and downs in their relationship. Finally they end up in Kalamazoo, Mich., where on her dating profile Peg said that she wanted to go to in order to see the bird sanctuary.
“Anyone coming to this is going to leave happy when they leave the door. Guaranteed,” Farrell said. “It’s about making the best use of time. Life is so short.”
The director, actors and crew members have been putting a lot of time into the performance themselves.
Work for the play began Sept. 5, and the group has been rehearsing every night from about 5:30 to 11 p.m.
BPP has also been collaborating with the writers from Los Angeles, Michelle Brooks and Kelly Younger., who were flown in and have stayed in town this week, offering suggestions and watching run-throughs.
The writers added a new scene at a bachelorette party hosted in a dance club.
“It’s pretty funny watching a 70-year-old woman throw cash and say, ‘Make it rain, sweetheart,’” Rabinovitz said.
The play’s humor is what made it stick out from the 300 submissions the group ?received.
“This comedy wasn’t just the funniest, but it was a story that was so sweet and touching and hysterical all at the same time,” Rabinovitz said. “My living is in reading and developing new plays, and its one of the best new plays I’ve developed in years.”
Rabinovitz read and cast the play in a matter of two hours, he said.
Reading the play at 10 p.m., he emailed the agents in less than an hour and contacted Farrell to play the role of Irving by 11:30 p.m.
“I read the play and imagined him in it,” Rabinoviz said. “It all happened within two hours. That’s how confident I am with this play.”
That confidence makes Rabinovitz positive that this play will have a positive effect on audiences.
The only person to see it was a student named Erin Brown, he said. Brown had worked to paint the chairs used as props for the Mexican restaurant scene.
“After the show, she said, ‘I was smiling the whole time,’” Rabinovitz said. “That’s what I want out of it. That one reaction sums it all up.”
