Notes from the Rehearsal Room
Dear Jack, Dear Louise at Arcola Theatre
March 9-11, 2026
Theatre is such a joyous, collaborative artform. Even so, the work of a playwright is often solitary. I spend most of my time on my own, creating the worlds that others will bring to life on stage.
One of the best parts of my job is escaping my quiet little writing space to join a cast for rehearsals as they begin their journey with one of my plays. My plays are alive to me as I write them, but it’s quite a different experience for me to be in a room while actors take my words and make them their own. The play comes alive all over again.
On March 9, 10, and 11, I was at Arcola Theatre in London for the first three days of rehearsal for the UK premiere of Dear Jack, Dear Louise. While I’d been part of the casting process for the production, this was my first opportunity to meet the actors, Eva Feiler and Preston Nyman.
I always love meeting actors who are in my plays, but there’s an extra layer with Dear Jack, Dear Louise because these two young people are playing my parents. If you read the play, you know my parents. I wrote them just as they were, but not all the actors whom I’ve watched audition or even play the roles inhabit them as I hear them in my memory. Eva and Preston feel like my parents. From the first read-through, Eva captured my mom’s buoyancy and love of life. Preston has precisely the quality that my dad had, which I can only think to call “good guyness”. I loved them both instantly.
The production is directed by Simon Reade. Simon and I have been friends for over twenty years and have worked together on various projects, but it hit me only when I arrived for rehearsal that I’ve never been in a room while he directs. There are as many ways to be a good director as there are good directors, but just because someone is good, doesn’t mean they’ll be in sync with a particular playwright or their work. I was so pleased—though perhaps not surprised—to find that Simon’s priorities as a director are totally in line with mine as a playwright. I suspect it’s his own work as a talented playwright makes him see a play as flowing first and foremost from the text. And as a fellow Shakespeare guy, Simon is masterful at working with the rhythms of words and phrases, pauses and punctuation. He encouraged the actors to live the play through the text, and that means everything to me.
Dear Jack, Dear Louise premiered in the US in 2019. As it’s been out in the world for several years, there wasn’t much work to be done rewriting the play for this production, which is usually what I do during opening rehearsals for a new commercial production or UK/European premiere. The unique challenge of these rehearsals was helping Simon, Eva, and Preston make sense of the American-ness of the play. A small sample:
America is huge. Jack is in Medford, Oregon, and Louise is in New York City. If you get in a car in London, and you drive all the way to Moscow, Russia, you’d still have another 1,000 miles to go to match the distance between Jack and Louise at the start of the play.
A footlocker is a trunk that soldiers kept at the foot of their cots to lock their possessions in, not a locker for shoes.
An evacuation hospital was a mobile medical camp near front-line fighting to treat wounded soldiers, not a staging point for evacuating the whole field of battle.
It was such fun to learn what was universal and what needed explaining.
We were able to do such wonderful work in the rehearsal room not only because of the dedication of our actors and director, but because the whole theatre runs like clockwork. This was my first time visiting Arcola—I’d never even been to the part of London’s East End where the theatre is located. It’s a vibrant area, and I love the theatre. It’s been in its current location for about twenty years, and in the spirit of theatre’s ability to thrive in unlikely places, Arcola’s space is a repurposed paint mixing factory. It retains a distinctly arty-industrial vibe, but the space is alive with theatre. I was pleased to find it welcoming, with everyone from the personnel at the front desk to the marketing and press teams friendly and eager to make the production a success.
Even purpose-built theatres don’t always serve their plays this well. I can’t remember the last time I was in a rehearsal room that was the right temperature! And the whole experience of being in the room was seamless thanks to Rosie and Mik, our stage management team, who were a constant presence and worked with perfect professionalism. Everyone in the theatre knows that a show lives and dies by its stage manager, so I want to thank Rosie and Mik. I left London knowing the show is in great hands.
Even though I know that no company wants the playwright haunting their rehearsal room for long, it was hard to tear myself away from this one. It was joyful, and I can’t wait to return for previews to see all the work they’ve done since I left.