Stephanie Muller,
editor 1/12/07
Steve Bergman and Janet
Surrey
As we began to treat more
and more alcoholics and addicts in therapy, and suggest that they go to AA, we
realized we needed to attend AA meetings, to see what they were really
about—otherwise we could not authentically recommend that our patients
go. At the meetings we were
astonished at the honesty, suffering, and mutual caring and healing, and from
that time on, when we took on any alcoholic or addict in therapy, we insisted
that they have ³a meaningful connection to AA.² This meant going to meetings, getting a sponsor, etc.
The idea for the play came
to us in 1986. We wanted to work
together, and decided to choose two projects: one from each of our areas of
expertise. Janet, as a founder of
the Stone Center at Wellesley College, had been conducting workshops on Cape
Cod on her theories of womenıs psychological development, and suggested that we
do a workshop on ³The Male Female Relationship.² That work, with 20,000 men and women and boys and girls, led
to our nonfiction book: WE HAVE TO TALK: HEALING DIALOGUES BETWEEN WOMEN AND
MEN (Basic, 98), and a curriculum, MAKING CONNECTION: BUILDING GENDER DIALOGUE
AND COMMUNITY IN SECONDARY SCHOOL (Educators for Social Responsibility,
07). Given Steveıs expertise, we
decided to write a play. We found
the story of Bill Wilson, and then Bob Smith, and were overwhelmed with the
power and drama of it—we decided to write a play about the relationship
between the two men that led to the founding of AA. First we held a reading in our house for invited guests,
then a staged reading at a small theatre.
At this staging, an old man stood up and said he had known Bill
Wilson. We asked what Bill was
like, and he said, ³Bill was the kind of man who could talk a dog off a meat
wagon!² (We use this line in the
play.) The first performance was
sponsored by the Gloucester Treatment Network for a weekend. The audience came from all over,
including Boston, addicts and alcoholics and their families, and was a huge
success. Many of the people had
never been in a theatre before, and we had to tell them, during intermission as
they were walking out, that there was a second act! After that there was a professional production in Boston
sponsored by the non-profit Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency, Emerson
College, and Harvard Medical School, and a year later after a brief Boston
production the play moved to San Diego for the 60th anniversary
International Conference of AA.
Last March it was done at the 400-seat New Repertory Theatre in Boston
for a sold-out run, and will open Off Broadway at New World Stages on March
5. (for information go to http://www.billwanddrbobtheplay.com) The audiences are not only people in recovery and
their families and friends, but the normal theatre audience. We always wanted the play to achieve
two things: to be true to the AA story, and to be a great play!
The play itself is done by six
actors: Bill, Bob, their wives, and a man and a woman who play many roles
(probably about 15, weıve lost count).
There is also a piano player on stage. It starts with a man standing up and talking to the
audience: ³My nameıs Bill W. and Iım an alcoholic.² (At which point many in the audience shout out, ³Hi Bill!²
and everyone laughs). On the other
side of the stage: ³Dr. Bob here, alcoholic. Good to be here sober.² They start to tell their stories, which overlap, and then
the rest of the play is our seeing their stories onstage,
dramatized—their lives, their meeting, and how they struggled to find a
third person to join them. The play ends with both men onstage as in the
beginning, each saying, ³And so as I come to the end of my story²
The play has been revised
countless times, from 1986 to last week.
The remarkable thing is that the story is always the same, but the play
keeps getting better. We cut extraneous
material, change scenes and orders of scenes, make sure we are getting the
³period² of the 30s right, and, finally, being sure to write each character as
a person in trouble just trying to stay alive—not knowing that they are
involved in the founding of AA.
Anne Smith and Lois Wilson
are crucial to the play—and to the founding of AA and Al Anon
(technically founded by Lois a year after Anne died). We see the cost of alcoholism to each of them, their torment
and resolve—neither of them divorced their men—and then how they
had to accept the life mission of their husbands, and how to live with them
sober. This last difficulty led to
their realizing that they had to have a support group, as families of
alcoholics, and this led to Al Anon.
Sue Window, Bobıs daughter, told us that in her mind her mother Anne was
the real founder of AA: her constant faith, and opening her house to Bill in
Akron in the summer of 35, and holding it all together—this is what Sue
meant. Women in the audience
identify strongly with being the wife of an alcoholic. In a talkback after one
performance a woman stood up and said, ³I am Lois!²
Every time the play has
been done it has been received with almost unanimous enthusiasm. Alcoholics and addicts feel affirmed,
and relieved that others who come will finally understand what they have gone
through, and what AA truly is—not a ³cult,² not a ³religious²
organization (both Bill and Bob, when theyıd met, were no enthusiastic about
organized religion). One man said,
³I feel like the last stigma about going to AA has finally been removed.² Others have said: ³This isnıt just a
great play, itıs a phenomenon.²
This means, we think, that sitting in the theatre is a vital spiritual
experience, for those with issues of addiction, and not. This is because at its core this play
and story is not just about alcohol, itıs about the power of mutual
connection to heal. The astonishing thing that these men found was, in
Billıs words, ³The only thing that can keep a drunk sober is telling his story
to another drunk.² No one in human
history had put ³healing² in that way, explicitly, before—the ³mutual²
nature of it. It has led to a
transformation of health practice: never before were there ³breast cancer
groups² or ³survivor groups² etc.
At the end of the play the audience sits in silence, a silence of the
touched spirit.
This play can be a great
help in clearing up misconceptions, and helping others to ³get it.² Addiction counselors will understand
what the essentials—practical and spiritual—of this healing process
are. Many times we have heard that
some alcoholics will start to seek treatment after seeing the play—of
their families will seek out Al Anon, or, sometimes, those who have relapsed
will come back to AA. One dark
night after a performance we were
walking out of the theatre and there were some ominous-seeming teenagers on the
street corner, and we asked if theyıd seen the play and one of them pointed at
the theatre and said, ³Those two guys saved my life!² As they say, ³Pass it on!²