Wishing I Could Talk with My Young Self, a Conversation with Playwright Sean Grennan

"I'm trying to make sense of this thing we have, this life we do," Sean Grennan, author of Now and Then, tells us. The play, which is running through September 30th at Lamb Arts Regional Theatre, found its beginning when the word "enouement" caught Grennan's eye. As a young man, an unknown word like this may have caused pause, a slight stumble, perhaps, in a brisk walk. In his early 60's, though, it was full stop. The word, roughly defined as the melancholia felt by one's wisened present-self reflecting upon one's naive younger-self, opened a gap for contemplation. "I'm one of these people that wakes up at 3:14 in the morning and thinks about that stupid thing he said in high school," Grennan says. It was a gap that in opening explained something familiar and revealed a deeper sense of this life we do. Now and Then is this gap and what filled it.