This guest post was written by Mark Mason, playwright of A Perfect Shade of Skyline Gray, which is up next in the Treehouse on February 29th. 

Sometimes you have to disappear to make a difference. In 1957 a crusading reporter named Amelia “Molly” Zelko vanished in the middle of night from her—and my—hometown of Joliet, Illinois. She would never be seen again, despite interest in her case from the FBI and a Rackets Committee attorney named Robert F. Kennedy.

Joliet in 1957 was living in a Technicolor dream, one slowly eroding from corruption and besotted by rust. Mob bosses and their wives were fixtures of the society pages in the Joliet Herald-News. The old-world values of the Irish, Italian, Polish and Slovenian immigrants were being eaten away by television commercials and a creeping sense of imminent doom that was America’s regularly-scheduled programming. The war in Korea, a war seemingly ignored even while it was being fought, was over: Joe McCarthy was dead and the airwaves were ruled by Milton Berle and Mickey Mouse, but something dangerous was in the air. The wonders of the atomic age had left some of the more hopeless residents shaking in their churches and basements, afraid to come outside and face death. Some turned to drugs. Some tried, foolishly, for love. A few, like Molly Zelko, tried to create a legacy. A Perfect Shade of Skyline Gray is a story about that legacy, a fictional story where all the most unbelievable parts are true: Bobby Kennedy swinging a shovel at a convict in the dirt, the firing of ninety-one employees of the US State Department for “sex perversion,” a woman forcefully occupying a position of power in a time when that made her a target and a threat…all these ludicrous examples of reality are what attracted me to the age-old stories that I heard throughout my youth and during my brief career as a Joliet newspaper columnist. The fantasies were real, and the fears worse than anything you could experience in your tepid little nightmares. An era of heightened romance (weddings in hundred-year-old churches, Frank Sinatra singing Gershwin melodies, Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson watching a deer come up to the window at the end of All That Heaven Allows) died in September 1957 as surely as another era died on June 6, 1968.

Last night we had our first read-through of the play with the inspired and inspiring cast, under the watchful eye of director Ronan Marra and New Leaf Artistic Director Jessica Hutchinson, and it was a revelation. The notion of “critical mass,” of finding the moment where everything changed, that had been the prompt and subject of this year’s Treehouse Series finally hit me with full force, as the impressive actors made these weird and wild characters their own. Paige Smith as heroin-addicted Korea vet Strickland Troy found humor and horror in every line. Amy Katherine Rapp, playing lesbian advice columnist Audrey Popplestone, skipped grimly from secret to secret with a deceptive but alluring innocence. John Zinn, embodying blacklisted ex-cowboy star Jerry Dickens, had a grim twinkle in his eyes and a desperate charisma even in his self-deceptions. Joe McCauley quickly captured the arrogance, intelligence and cadence of future Attorney General Bobby Kennedy. Our captivating ensemble trio of Pat King, John Stovkis and Emily Casey commandingly played dozens of characters, shifting effortlessly from blind French-Canadian newspaper publishers to disfigured jazz singers to hired killers and whipping cult leaders, turning an isolated little world into an epic one. And Lindsay Leopold, stepping into the worn-out heels of Zelko stand-in Margaret “Maggie” Krolyak, threw open every locked door, laughing with a weary voice that tells us her bold, brave and passionate stories that soon will be all that’s left of her after she vanishes in the dark of night.

There are dark places in the world of Skyline Gray, places that not every theatre company is comfortable going. That’s why it’s been anunbelievable blessing to work with New Leaf, the thoughtfulness and enthusiasm of this company has been a boon to creativity at every level: Signal Ensemble Theatre Co-Artistic Director Ronan Marra is an ideal director for this piece, in touch with the dialogue, the music and the spirit at every level, it’s been a dream working with him so far and I hope we have may such opportunities in the future. And talking about the play and its possibilities with Jessica and Josh Sobel has taught me how devoted New Leaf really is to new work. It’s not just lip service, it’s dedication to art and story bordering on religious and for a business like theatre, it’s both refreshing and inspiring. Because if Molly Zelko and Bobby Kennedy have taught me anything, it’s that story is everything…and they should know. They died for theirs.

Mark Mason is a former newspaper columnist from Joliet, Illinois. A graduate of The Theatre School at DePaul University, Mark has had staged readings of his work at A Red Orchid Theatre, Chicago Dramatists and The Den. His play Hurrah for the Next Who Dies, a tragedy about the murder of Chicago Tribune reporter Jake Lingle in 1930, was selected by DePaul as their annual New Playwrights Series production in 2008, where it was directed by former American Theatre Company Artistic Director Damon Kiely. Dracula: A Tragedy, a new adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic horror novel, premiered at Redtwist Theatre in 2010. He has had his one-acts Make Your Visit as Inconspicuous as Possible and Intangible Assets produced by The Inconvenience, and this April his play Rest for the Weary Spirit (co-written with Ellen Chambers) will premiere in a production by The Smiley Face and the Frown Entertainment Group at the Archway Theatre in Los Angeles.