Lela & Co
Director's Note
 

                                             “It is the story that we tell in my family. We tell it again and again, we pray it at night

                                               so we don’t have to tell the other story. The true story.”

                                                                               -Lela

 

The day I was born baseball Hall of Famer Early Wynn was pitching for the Chicago White Sox who were hosting the Kansas City Athletics. In Edgewater Hospital my mother, who had only just begun to go into labor, stepped from the delivery room into the waiting room wheremy father was sitting with the other expectant fathers, and she smoked a cigarette. The ball game was on a radio and my mom, half in jest and half in seriousness, suggested to my dad that if I was born a boy they should name me Early Wynn Witt. I narrowly escaped being called “Early” because, alas, Mr. Wynn was not to be the winning pitcher that day and to my great good fortune I was born a girl. And it was in this way, according to my mom, my lifelong love of baseball began.

 

This is but one story of many in the treasure chest of my family lore (the harsher ones I’ll spare you). I come from a theatrical family, and our penchant for retelling and embellishing family mythology is almost a competitive sport. We tell these stories whenever we are together, over late-night drinks after holiday dinners, or whispering in bathrooms at cousins’ weddings, sometimes with rage or solemnity and sometimes while laughing ourselves into tears.

 

Lela & Co is a play about a woman who finds the courage to tell her own true story so she may obliterate the crushing, false narrative that has been forced upon her by the men in her life. She asks of us only to be witnesses to the truth.

 

I am so grateful to play a small part in the telling of Cordelia Lynn’s story of Lela & Co.

 

And this is for all the Lelas.

 

Robin Witt

June 2017

In memory of Howard Witt, Actor