Katie Forgette’s family comedy “Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help” is set in 1973, the year of the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling. That’s not a coincidence.
“I wanted to write something that was fun and retro and not specifically about my life but set in the world of 1970s Catholicism,” Forgette said. “And also something about what it meant, and to this day means, to be female.”
In “Incident,” which begins previews next Wednesday at North Coast Repertory Theatre, elder daughter Linda of the Irish Catholic O’Shea family is graduate school-bound and very much in tune with the fledgling women’s movement of the era. She also finds herself telling her younger sister Becky about menstruation and about where babies come from.
“She’s not feeling particularly generous,” Forgette says of Linda, who is played at North Coast Rep by Samantha Gorjanc, “but she also knows that the facts have to come out. She doesn’t mince words.”
Thanks to a precocious Becky (Abbi Hoffpauir), that frank sister-to-sister discussion winds up being shared at the 13-year-old’s Catholic school. That’s when the “incident” stirs things up at the parish.
Forgette said she comes from “a fairly traditional Catholic family” herself and attended parochial school for 12 years. It was during these years that she encountered the different rules for females.
“One of my first disappointments in life,” she said, “was when I was in the first grade and I thought I wanted to become a priest. I was told I couldn’t be a priest because I was a girl. To tell a child they will never be able to do something because they are the wrong gender is devastating.
“That’s how it began for me: finding out through the church what you could and couldn’t do.”
This undercurrent simmers beneath the comedy of “Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help,” which premiered five years ago at Chenango River Theatre in New York state.
“I’ve had a couple of theaters ask if we might soften the language,” said Forgette, “which I thought was an odd request. I’ve picked up on two young women speaking that way bothering people more than two young men. (The play) is also about female puberty, which for some people seems to have a higher ‘ick factor.’”
Writing for and about women is important to Forgette, who is presently occupied with the world premiere of her play “Mrs. Loman is Leaving” at ACT Contemporary Theatre in her hometown of Seattle. The play is about the widow of Willy Loman from Arthur Miller’s classic play “Death of a Salesman.”
“I try to write plays that have more female parts or at least the same number (as male parts),” said Forgette, a longtime actor as well as a playwright, “and also parts for women who are over 40, over 50, over 60. There aren’t enough of them.”
Jenny Sullivan is making her North Coast Rep directorial debut with “Incident,” the cast of which also includes Erin Noel Grennan and Tom Dugan as the O’Shea parents (Dugan plays multiple roles) and Shana Wride as Aunt Terri.
‘Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help’
When: Previews begin Wednesday, Oct. 23. Opens Oct. 26 and runs through Nov. 24. 7 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays; 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays
Where: North Coast Repertory Theatre, 987 Lomas Santa Fe Drive, Solana Beach
Tickets: $52-$74
Phone: 858-481-1055
Online: northcoastrep.org
