On the night before the first anniversary of the death of Marina Keegan, the 22-year-old writer who was killed in a car crash on Cape Cod days after graduating magna cum from Yale, her play "Utility Monster," will have its world premiere at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, not far from where she spent vacations at her family's summer home.
"It's a very emotional project for us," says Dan Lombardo, the artistic director of the theater, who is also staging the play that has previews on Thursday and Friday and opens Saturday.
Keegan, an English major, was a columnist for the Yale Daily News and her inspirational essay "The Opposite of Loneliness," published in a special graduation edition of the newspaper, created a buzz about the young writer. She was about to begin working as an editorial assistant at The New Yorker when she died in the crash in Dennis, Mass. on the Cape. The Wayland, Mass. native was planning to move with friends to Brooklyn last June.
"I can't think of a better way of memorializing my daughter than by having her vision and voice shared,' says Tracy Keegan, Marina's mother.
Lombardo learned about the work last summer when Keegan's father, Kevin, shared a DVD of his daughter's musical, "Independents," which had a posthumous production at New York International Fringe Festival.
"I loved it but it was a big production and would be expensive to produce," says the Hartford-born, Wethersfield-raised Lombardo. "I asked what else she had written and that's when he sent me the play. As soon as I started reading it I knew I wanted to do it. It was also right for the theater, that produces works that push envelopes, that are political and that asks fresh, hard questions.
"Utility Monster" is a five-actor, 33-scene play that centers on two New York City 15-year-olds, who decide to launch a fund-raising campaign to help starving African children after they discover more than 35,000 children die of starvation every day.
"These kids take their ideals seriously," says Lombardo. "They ask big questions: Why are we alive? Why do we spend $10 at Taco Bell when the same amount of money could literally save children's lives? And Marina is also askling how do compare the value of art to the value of human life."
"Utility Monster" was written over a two-year period, first for the Yale Dramatic Association (DRAMAT) — it was the first student show in four years — and then further developed at the Midtown Manhattan International Playwrights Festival and at Firework Theater in Brooklyn.
"That's where it really became a finished product," says Kevin Keegan, 56, a Greenwich native who went to UConn. "My daughter's writing always has the underlying message of trying to make a difference. In producing this work we are able to honor her and get that message out, to remember her passion for the arts and for her causes."
Lombardo, who got his start in theater at Hartford's Open Stage Company, calls the play "moving, charming and hysterically funny. She was very passionate about social justice and the theater and she combines both in this play. It's a tremendous honor to premiere this deeply felt work in a community where she lived."
A collection of Keegan's writings is expected to be published next year by Scribner. Proceeds will go to creating a foundation for causes aligned with Keegan's passions. Yale established the Marina Keegan Award for Excellence in Playwriting and named the Saybrook reading room on campus after her.
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