By STEVE PFARRER
For more than 30 years, Julie Akeret’s had a career in film, from sound editing to operating a camera to directing and producing her own documentaries. Her films, which have won numerous awards, have examined the use of arts in education, gay and lesbian rights, and a leader in the animal rights movement, among several topics.
But over the past several years, Akeret, of Leeds, has also been exploring a different kind of storytelling — first as a short story writer, and now as a playwright.
She’s also making an impressive debut with her one-act play, “Shit-House Crazy,” which she began writing a couple of years ago. The drama/comedy won first place at a competition for new playwrights in Newburyport and will be performed at the city’s Firehouse Center for the Arts later this month.
For Akeret, finding her way in fiction wasn’t easy at first. She jokes that aside from penning the narration for her films, her writing experience had previously been confined to “reports in school and grant proposals” (the latter for her movies).
“It just wasn’t fun for me,” she said in a recent interview in her home. “Writing seemed like a chore a lot of the time.”
But after joining a fiction-writing group in Florence, “Writers in Progress,” run by author and teacher Dori Ostermiller, Akeret began to find a way to tap some of her memories and family stories for creative use.
“Dori used to say to me, ‘Julie, writing doesn’t have to be all Sturm und Drang,’ ” Akeret said. “It can be fun.”
In her play, Akeret seems to have found her stride. Two patients, 14-year-old Lily Allen and 30-something Jackson Burk, a lawyer, both arrive at a New York psychiatrist’s office for the same 4 p.m. appointment. Their encounter offers elements of mutual suspicion and misunderstanding, as well as many laugh-out-loud moments.
Underneath the laughter, though, the play explores serious issues: homophobia, bulimia and sexual exploitation of adolescent girls. Yet the play also looks at the potential for making a connection to another person, while advancing a plea for a greater tolerance of people’s differences.
Akeret, who grew up in New York City — she moved with her husband, John Daniel, and their two young sons to the Valley a bit over 20 years ago — says she’s long been concerned about what happens to girls as they move into adolescence. Too often, she says, happy, independent girls seem to become anxious, self-doubting teens, in some cases experiencing serious depression and engaging in destructive behavior like self-mutilation.
“Why is that?” wondered Akeret, who earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Columbia University in New York before getting involved with film. “What about our society, our expectations about young women, brings this about? … I’m really interested in giving these girls a voice and finding out more about them.”
She examined the issue in part with her 2005 film “Tomboys!” which profiled four women who retained their “rebel spirit” from girlhood through adolescence right into adulthood.
Homophobia is another important topic, one that was at the heart of her 1999 film “Looking for Common Ground.” That documentary covered a controversy in Westhampton during the mid-1990s, in which efforts to develop policies to protect gay and lesbian students at Hampshire Regional High School from harassment provoked strong opposition from some community members.
Both these themes are prominent in “Shit-House Crazy,” which Akeret says was also prompted by disturbing stories in the media during the last two years, like the senior boys at a storied prep school in New Hampshire routinely sexually assaulting freshmen girls in what they called the “Senior Salute.”
Then, numerous women came forward charging entertainment icon Bill Cosby with past rapes, Akeret said, while Donald Trump made a slew of misogynistic comments during his run for president.
“I thought, ‘What is going on here?’ ” she said. “And how can I respond to it?”
If Akeret’s play can’t answer those questions, it attempts to address them though the initially frosty meeting between Lily and Jason in the waiting room of the psychiatrist, Dr. Friedman (who does not appear in the play). Lily seems at first a snarky wiseass: both her parents are psychiatrists, and she has a decidedly cynical view of therapy and life in general.
When she and Jackson argue about which of the two should get the 4 p.m. appointment, Jackson says he needs a “Band-Aid” from Dr. Friedman to help him get through a crucial job interview the following day.
Lily’s response? “You should know better than going to a Freudian for a Band-Aid. There’s no such thing. They do major surgery. It takes years and costs thousands of dollars and eats into your free time when you could be playing racket ball or watching ‘Downton Abbey.’ ”
“Oh, I bet you’re a handful at home,” Jackson says.
“I’m a handful at school, too,” Lily retorts.
Lily, in fact, nonchalantly confesses she’s been sent to see Dr. Friedman because she’s been poisoning some of her classmates. Well, not really poisoning them: she’s been slipping a laxative into their food in the cafeteria so that “the lucky recipient will spend about an hour in the bathroom after lunch,” as Lily puts it.
Behind Lily’s sardonic bravado, though, she’s hurting. She’s become entangled in a one-way, “Friends With Benefits” (FWB) relationship with a senior boy at her school that provides the boy, Alex, with sexual gratification and leaves her with self-hatred and bulimia; hence her revenge through laxative dispersal.
Jackson, meanwhile, has a little problem with kleptomania, at least when it comes to small cream pitchers from restaurants. “I can’t help it — it’s just in my blood,” he tells Lily. As it transpires, his beloved grandmother also stole cream pitchers — and Jackson does it as a way of honoring her memory, as his “granny” was the only member of his family, in Indiana, who accepted his homosexuality.
As Lily and Jackson reveal their secrets, in often hilarious fashion, their barriers come down and they find some common ground — something Akeret sees as an important goal, in a more general sense, in the wake of the divisive 2016 election.
Footnote: Akeret’s father is a psychologist, and her grandmother, years ago, pilfered cream pitchers from restaurants in her native Switzerland. “Only if they were the pewter or silver,” Akeret said. “She wouldn’t touch the stainless-steel ones.”
Akeret, who credits her older son, Will, with helping sharpen some of the play’s dialogue and scenes, says she’s thrilled it will be performed in Newburyport, and she hopes she can find a way to get it staged in the Valley at some point. She attended some of the auditions for it at the Newburyport arts center, and she also plans to go see some of the rehearsals. The play is being directed by Newbury playwright and musician Stephen Faria.
She’s also hoping she and her film co-producer, Kate Way, can finish their newest documentary, “Good Guy with a Gun,” this year. The film looks at the debate over arming teachers and other staff in schools to try and prevent mass shootings. She and Way have filmed extensively in a school district in Ohio where certain teachers and staff members have been trained to respond to shooters; the policy has divided members of the community.
And Akeret says she’s working on other fiction projects, including a Young Adult novel. “After being involved with film for so many years, I’m really happy to have found another medium to work in,” she said.
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.
“Shit-House Crazy” will be performed Jan. 27 at 8 p.m. at the Firehouse Center for the Arts in Newburyport as part of the New Works Festival. More information and directions can be found at firehouse.org.