Playwright
Phil Olson is best known for his popular, hilarious DON’T HUG ME musical plays
written with brother Paul Olson, that are crowd favorites wherever they are
performed. His comedy, A NICE FAMILY
GATHERING, played at Group Rep Lonny Chapman Theatre in 2016, has been
nominated for an NAACP LA Local Award for Best Ensemble. Phil shares with us some details about his
life as a writer and how “Don’t Hug Me, We’re Family” came about.
written
by Steve Peterson
When did
you start writing plays? Do you have any
favorites?
I wrote my
first play “Crappie Talk” in 1997. I was 40 years old. I got a late start. I
currently have 15 published plays, 9 of them are published by Samuel French.
It’s hard to say which play is my favorite. They’re like children to me. With
that, I have to say, “A Nice Family Gathering” is at the top of the list
because it’s such a personal story. It’s about my family, and because it has
played in 140 cities around the world, I’m thrilled that so many theatres have
embraced it. It’s also been optioned to be made into a movie which is very
flattering.
It’s been more than 20 years since you wrote “Crappie Talk”
with a storyline and characters that continued in your “Don’t Hug Me” series of
musicals. What generated the idea to go
back and turn the play into a musical?
I loved the
story in "Crappie Talk", and it had a nice run at the Group Rep Theatre playing
for 16 weeks. It was my first play, and even though it did very well
commercially and won a lot of awards, there were problems with it that I wanted to fix. I cut down the number of characters, cut down the number
of scenes, added 14 original songs (with my brother) and orchestrated 12 radio
jingles. Since the setting is the same as that in the "Don’t Hug Me" musicals,
the other changes came fairly easily.
What is the premise of "Don’t Hug Me, We’re Family"?
Set in a
little north woods Minnesota town, the host of a
radio show devoted entirely to ice fishing loses his only advertiser while his
wife, a popular host of a book show, has a lot of advertisers, putting the
competitive couple at odds. Their marital problems are compounded when
two, fish-out-of-water, Brooklyn Italians come to the rural Minnesota town, buy
the radio station, and turn everything upside down. It's "Fargo" meets "My Cousin Vinny" without the blood or the trial lawyers.
What do you want the audience to take away with them?
First, I want them to have a great time. It’s a fun, uplifting musical
that will hopefully bring a little cheer to the audience. There’s also an
emotional element to the story that’s personal to me that I hope has an impact
on the audience. And, of course, I’d like them to hum the songs as they drive
home, and then tell all their friends to go see it.
Is there anything you wished had been asked about you or about the play?
The story was inspired by journalist Charles Kuralt who, during his
travels around the country, bought a little radio station in Ely, Minnesota, up
near the Canadian border. I thought it would be funny if two New York outsiders
came to the little north woods Minnesota bar, bought the radio station and
collided with the locals. And yet, even though their cultures are very
different, they have a lot in common.
Don’t
Hug Me, We’re Family runs February 16 – March 25. Fridays at 8:00 p.m., Saturdays at 8
p.m., & Sundays at 2:00 p.m.; $15 -
$24. Buy tickets:
donthugme.brownpapertickets.com or 818-850-9254. Don’t
Hug Me, We’re Family is a guest production at Theatre Unlimited (T.U. Studios), 10943 Camarillo
St. (just east of Vineland) North Hollywood.
