Literary greats meet in Center Stage original

A real-life summer stay between famed playwright Tennessee Williams and acclaimed author Carson McCullers is the backdrop for the new play at Center Stage Conservatory.

An original work by Patterson native Derek Botelho, “31 Pine Street” has its world premiere Friday, Nov. 4, at the downtown Modesto community theater. It will run through Nov. 20. The relationship comedy-drama is a fictionalized imagining of an actual 1946 visit between the literary icons at Williams’ summer home in Nantucket, Mass. Williams was writing “A Streetcar Named Desire” and McCullers had just published “The Member of the Wedding.”

Botelho, who now lives in Los Angeles, said he was inspired to write and direct the play while preparing for a production of Williams’ semi-autobiographical play “The Glass Menagerie.”

“There was this small passage about Carson McCullers going to Nantucket to stay with Williams. And I thought, ‘What was this? What might have happened?’ ” he said.

The resulting play has Williams spending the summer with his boyfriend, Amado “Pancho” Rodriguez, in Nantucket when McCullers comes to visit. Also living nearby is Baronessa Margot von Opel, the wife of a German auto mogul, who rekindles a friendship with McCullers during her stay. The show is named after the address of Williams’ vacation home.

Botelho said the play also delves into the writers’ sexuality and how it was handled publicly vs. privately during that era. All of the show’s four real-life characters were gay or bisexual.

“This was a time when being gay or bisexual wasn’t something you did outside of the home,” he said. “So I accidentally wrote this piece on sexual liberation in a way, too.”

Botelho graduated from Patterson High School in 1995 and studied theater at Modesto Junior College before moving to Los Angeles to work as a visual effects artist and freelance writer. He said through his local work he was familiar with Center Stage and thought the piece would be a good fit for the company.

The production has a small cast of four. It stars Center Stage Artistic Director Traci Sprague as McCullers, Modesto actor Daniel James Moody as Williams, Daniel Medina as Pancho Rodriguez, and Jennifer Golden as von Opel.

McCullers broke out at age 23 with her debut novel “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” in 1940. She went on to write three more novels: “Reflections in a Golden Eye,” “The Member of the Wedding” and “Clock Without Hands.” Williams is considered one of the greatest American playwrights who won two Pulitzer Prizes, a Tony and the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his works, including “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Sweet Bird of Youth.”

“I’m hoping audiences respond to something in it, even if it’s just to be grateful for the time that we’re alive,” Botelho said.

This story was originally published October 26, 2016 at 9:59 AM with the headline "Literary greats meet in Center Stage original."