Though she has always loved writing, Elizabeth West’s career as a playwright began mostly out of necessity.
Volunteering for her husband, Doug West, in his school theater programs over their 20-year marriage, she noticed the need for shows that were more inclusive and accessible to all drama programs and students. Not finding them, she began writing them.
But, of course, if you ask Doug West why she did it, he has a slightly different answer.
“You forgot to say I begged and pleaded with you,” Doug West, theater teacher at Rochester High School, said to his wife with a laugh.
Soon, Elizabeth West’s plays will be available to more than just Doug West’s students. Two of her plays, “Rosie the Riveter” (produced by Rochester High School in May 2017) and “Pied Piper” (produced by Rochester High School in May 2019) are being published by Drama Notebook for Educational Performance.
“It’s a thrill,” she said of learning her pieces would be published, especially by a company that provides low-cost, royalty-free scripts to schools. “It’s a thrill to think I’m leaving this for others.”
The inspiration to begin writing plays began when she noticed her husband’s struggle to find the right plays for the right price to produce with his students. For example, Rochester High School produced “Cinderella” the musical in 2016 and the piece cost $3,000 just to secure the rights to the show.
“A school our size can’t afford to do that,” Elizabeth West said.
In an effort to keep budgets in line, the Wests began looking to public domain pieces, but said there is a very small and tired group of shows that schools can do for free. And besides being expensive, many of the well-known shows are also driven by a single lead character, sometimes with the lead character appearing in every scene while other characters have only one or two brief appearances. The Wests agreed that spreading the singing and lines out among all of the cast members made for a more enriching experience. And Doug West has always had a policy that every person who auditions for him gets a part in the show, so having plays that could be easily adapted to fit who turned out was a huge advantage for them.
“You occasionally have a 10-person cast and 20 people show up so you have to re-write, make a lot more group scenes, things like that,” Elizabeth West said.
Many mainstream shows are also male-dominated, but in high school theater, the talent pool can often be female-dominated, Doug West noted. Since they are not allowed to have cast members dress as the opposite sex and original material often prohibits characters being changed to the opposite sex, Elizabeth West said it began to make more sense to her that an original show piece, owned by them, was the right answer.
“We’d have like 25 girls and three or four boys show up for a play,” she recalled. “So, I started adapting plays. If there wasn’t a romantic relationship, I started re-writing the supporting roles as mothers and sisters and aunts.”
The first piece she wrote for Doug’s students to use was called “Purloined Letter.” It was a musical-review style show using 1940s music. She has also modernized Shakespearian tales in order to make the language more approachable for both thespians and audiences.
Though it was produced in 2017, “Rosie the Riveter” was actually a show that took Elizabeth West a couple years to research and write. Set in 1941-1943, it was inspired by meeting an actual Rosie at her job at a special event at Boeing several years ago. But it’s also deeply personal because her father was on a ship during World War II and her mother did some of the work the Rosies did during the war effort. The show highlights some of the groundbreaking ideas of the Rosie era such as women wearing pants, women working outside the home, businesses offering childcare and even ride-sharing. Drama Notebook for Educational Performance is actually preparing a study guide to go along with the show that can be used to celebrate Women’s History Month. Elizabeth West said she was not surprised by this because the show elicited a lot of thoughtful conversations in the cast that performed it at Rochester High School.
“Our cast loved it and they loved learning about these things,” Elizabeth West said. “Every day at rehearsal there would be talk about ‘I never knew this.’”
The idea for “Pied Piper” came to Elizabeth West in 2019 when they had a talented young lady they wanted to use as a main character for a show who was a skilled flutist, but did not enjoy singing. She pulled from the traditional tale that happened to also include a flute.
“For a small school, we have to use the talent we have,” Doug West said.
“When you have someone you want to be in your show, sometimes you have to write them a part that suits them,” Elizabeth West added.
Though Elizabeth West previously worked in tech, theater has been a passion the Wests have shared together. Elizabeth West holds a bachelor’s degree in theater from the University of Oregon and a master’s degree in fine arts from the University of Portland. Doug has been teaching theater for more than 20 years, previously at Pacific Lutheran University and then jokes he “moved up to” teaching theater at high schools. Together they have been involved in more than 200 plays, both on and off stage. Elizabeth West said she has other plays in mind and in the works that she intends to submit to Drama Notebook and hopes they get published, not so much for her own notoriety but to support students continuing to learn through theater.
“Education is the most important thing,” Elizabeth West said. “We can educate them in theater but a lot of them will never do theater after this. But having to do a report, business presentations, they’re now prepared for that.”
