THE STORY BEHIND THE RETURN TO MORALITY
An Interview with Playwright Jamie Pachino

Playwright Jamie Pachino visited Philadelphia as a girl and had the usual experiences: she was taken to see Carpenters Hall, the Liberty Bell, and Independence Hall -- the symbols of our political liberties. This season, she returns to Philadelphia with a play that asks fundamental questions about politics, personal responsibility, and liberty.

Pachino was trained as an actress at Northwestern University. "I started out as a dancer, then I studied acting and got hooked." She made the shift from acting to writing on a bet. "A friend bet me I couldn't write a play based on a word selected from the dictionary. In college I had a teacher who assigned us to follow people around, eavesdrop on them, and write what they said in our journals. After a while all I could hear was dialogue." The play that resulted was successfully produced in Chicago and elsewhere, launching Pachino's career as a playwright. The Return to Morality was inspired by a true story Pachino heard while listening to NPR in her car. The story was about a book called Report from Iron Mountain, a hoax perpetrated by some of the leading liberal intellectuals of the 1970's including novelist E.L. Doctrow and John Kenneth Gailbraith, that has been taken seriously in the 1980's and 1990's by the radical right. In fact, radical right wing groups continue to argue that the Report is an authentic suppressed government document, even though it's author has publicly disclaimed its authenticity for over 20 years. (See sidebar.) The main characters, Arthur Kellogg and his publisher, LeBecque, came to her almost immediately, and she drove home and wrote the first scene in a single sitting. "The scene that starts the play wrote itself. The rest of it came from me saying to myself, 'what happens now? What happens next?' Over and over after each scene."

The play The Return to Morality tracks the consequences of the publication of a book called The Return to Morality. The book, a diatribe against liberal causes which proposes extreme solutions to contemporary social problems, was written by a liberal democrat and intended as a satire. However, it is published and sold as non-fiction, and it comes to serve as the justification for acts of extremism perpetrated by supporters of the book's supposed principles. "The Return to Morality is about a liberal who behaves very badly, and makes all the mistakes that lead to his own downfall."

The Return to Morality is not the first play of Pachino's that has tread into controversial territory. "I had an experience with my play Theodora: an Unauthorized Biography where the Chicago Tribune critic said I was "male bashing" because the historians who get lambasted are all men. But that critic overlooked the fact that until the 1900s all the historians were men, and I was simply HISTORIAN bashing. The woman historian in the play got her hits as well, but the critic neglected to see that because the play supported a feminist agenda."

While its plot is at the junction of the worlds of politics and media, The Return to Morality is also a play about the consequences of relinquishing personal responsibility. Pachino says, "It's really about the choices we make, and our motivations. Every choice Arthur Kellogg makes has consequences. Arthur takes the advice of all of the wrong people, a makeup artist over his wife, for instance. And he is naive enough to believe that he can control the portrayal of the book, and himself, in the American media."

The Return to Morality is a fast-paced play with dialogue that crackles with sharp exchanges and dead-on satire. Its characters are smart people who lose sight of what's important. And like Lebensraum, The Return to Morality manages to be simultaneously a reflection of our values and a very funny cautionary tale. "I'm a little of everyone in my plays, " Pachino says. "To me writing is a lot like extended improvisation on paper for one actor -- me, the writer."

--Larry Loebell, Literary Manager