Kevin Rice has had a long history in the theater on the Cape, starting way back with the co-founding of the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater (WHAT) with several other people. Although he has been the artistic director at Payomet Performing Arts Center since 2008, this week he opens his new play back at WHAT for its world premiere. Sacco & Vanzetti’s Divine Comedy is, just like it sounds, a comedy about the famous case of Sacco and Vanzetti, who were tried and then executed for murder in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in what many see as a quintessential case of xenophobia, racism, and anti-immigrant hysteria. In a time now of unprecedented state-sponsored attacks on immigrant communities, including ICE raids that have taken immigrants as young as nine years old, on the orders of the Trump Administration, it’s important to look back at U.S. immigration history to see the roots of all of this. Rice grew up in Milford, Massachusetts, where his mother worked in the same shoe factory as Nicola Sacco, and where he worked in an Italian-American grocery store. Rice took some time to share with us the story of how this play came to be.
Provincetown Magazine: How did you first start writing plays and what were you doing before?
Kevin Rice: [It was] when I was 18. I was living downstairs from a woman who was physically abused by her sick, sadistic husband. Our family owned the house, rented the upstairs in our hometown, Milford. The first play was about her, a one-act, titled The Woman Upstairs. My professor read it and said I should become a playwright. I did. I was one of those kids who did a lot of drama stuff—plays, competitions. My specialty was original oratory. I won a statewide contest and represented Massachusetts in the nationals. At age 16, I published my own independent newspaper, The Heavy Press. S’pose you’d call it an underground paper, since my goal was to create a voice for youth (mainly, not entirely because we had older contributors). The first issue criticized the Milford School Committee for not participating in the Vietnam Moratorium in September 1969.
PM: The play is at WHAT. Tell me a little about your history with WHAT.
KR: We all (six founders, but also major talents like Stephen Russell) wanted to take theater to the next level. The Outer Cape Performance Company, led by artistic directors Michael Wilson and Debra Summers had begun in this direction, 1980-1983, but it fizzled out. We (me and Gip[Hoppe]) produced my first full-length play, Oyster Cove-Next Five Exits, in the summer of 1984, 27 performances above the Oyster House in Wellfleet that summer. We paid ourselves $200/week from ticket sales. That, and our experience here on the Outer Cape (Gip had done some stuff in Ptown with Judy Israel and Sandy McGinn where he and they each made $300/week) told us, there’s money in them thar hills! Not really, but… we ALL wanted to do more serious theater—and ideally, make a living from it. Or at least get paid something.
PM: How did you first become interested in the Sacco and Vanzetti case?
KR: Here is what I just wrote for WHAT about that. It’s the best way to answer that: Sacco & Vanzetti’s Divine Comedy is a deeply personal play and the writing of it has taken me close to my roots. I’ve been interested in Sacco and Vanzetti since I was sixteen when I first heard of their trial and execution. My love of history and my interest in their story must have started around age twelve when I read A Nation of Immigrants by John F. Kennedy. In the course of my research on this play I learned that Nicola Sacco lived the happiest years of his short life in my hometown of Milford, Mass. where he met and married his wife, Rosina. At the time of his arrest, Nicola and Rosina had a six-year-old son, Dante, and Rosina was pregnant with their second child, a daughter, Ines, who only ever got to meet her father in prison.
PM: The case happened nearly 100 years ago and many things have changed in this country, many things have not. What do you think are the main aspects that still resonate today, and why?
KR: A 16-year-old Nicola Sacco emigrated in 1908 from the Foggia region of Puglia, Italy, disembarked in Boston and headed straight to Milford where he was welcomed by the many Foggiani who had made that their home in the new country. Today this natural chain migration of humans is decried by some as if it is an evil phenomenon. But was not when their forebears arrived? The play draws from the current lexicon of present fearmongers, i.e., describing immigration as “an invasion” requiring military action to fend it off… It was one year ago that I bumped into the acclaimed American playwright, Paula Vogel, who kindly asked me what I was writing of late. I answered, “A play about Sacco and Vanzetti.” And then I added, “It may sound crazy, but I’m writing it as a comedy.” She answered: “It has to be… it’s the only way you’ll get an audience.”
The other way to get an audience: find an Artistic Director like Chris Ostrom and a theater like the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater brave enough to risk producing an original play, one whose story of opposition to fascism, racism and mistreatment of immigrants resonates with much that is going on in this country of late. Likewise, big thanks to the masterful director, Tim Habeger who jumped in and made it come alive; to my good friend, Dan Lombardo who encouraged me from the start; and to dramaturg Ali Keller who helped guide me through the twists and turns of a complex story compressed into one day; to the super talented cast; to my wife, Marla, for her support in every way; and, lastly, to the brilliant Michael Sottile whose songs and music brought to the play the light and joy that both Sacco and Vanzetti harbored throughout their dreadful internment, right up to their execution in the electric chair.
I hope that this attempt to use comedy—and music—to tell Sacco and Vanzetti’s story does not detract from my ultimate goal, that the audience leave the theater remembering the oft-repeated maxim that the only way not repeat the mistakes of the past is by remembering history. And taking action necessary to deny it being repeated.
Sacco & Vanzetti’s Divine Comedy is performed at WHAT, 2357 State Highway Route 6, Wellfleet, Tuesdays – Saturdays, 7 p.m., June 27 – July 26 (with preview performances June 25 & 26 and no show July 4). For tickets ($15 – $30) and information call 508.349.9428 or visit what.org.
–Rebecca M. Alvin
