Author Nicholas Dunn Discusses RTC’s Debut of ‘The Value’

By Dan Guarino

When the house lights go down on opening night for “The Value” at the Rockaway Theatre Company (RTC), it will be more than the actors just offstage and the creative team waiting in energetic excitement. More than the audience feeling anticipation.

For Salt Lake City-based playwright Nicholas Dunn, who will be in the audience with several guests, this will be a very big night as RTC debuts its first-ever original work, his play “The Value” on its mainstage. It runs from Friday, May 23, to Sunday, June 8, with showtimes on Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets are available at www.rockawaytheatrecompany.org.

“I’m incredibly excited, especially knowing this is RTC’s first time producing a new play as part of their season,” Dunn said. “That’s a real honor. What thrills me most is it feels like it means just as much to RTC as it does to me.”  He notes his in-depth conversations with director, and RTC Artistic Director, Frank Caiati, about its characters and themes “show how they’re putting all their creative powers behind” this production.

About those characters, he said, “Not wanting to give too much away, I’ll just say that ‘trust’ is a big issue in the play. They all hope they can trust each other, and want to trust each other, but they’re all aware of the risk in that. And there’s a lot of friction in what they think they are owed.”

“One of the highest compliments I’ve received about the play is that this person felt persuaded by whichever character spoke last. It’s not a play of good guys and bad guys. It’s a play of competing ideas,” Dunn said.

Set in a rundown motel, the plot revolves around three thieves who, at the behest of a fourth character, steal a painting. Only later do they each discover and must wrestle with the true worth of what they have stolen.

Previously Dunn had been writing plays for a children’s theatre company and working as script coordinator on several different television shows. He longed, however, to write something original, for himself.

“I read an article online about art theft, about how mundane it really is compared to how it’s often portrayed in popular culture,” Dunn said. He noted that in 1994 when Edvard Munch’s famous painting “The Scream” was stolen, “the thieves left a note thanking the gallery for their poor security. When it was stolen again ten years later, the theft was considered much more ‘sophisticated’ because the thieves thought to wear masks.”

“It seemed to me that the more interesting story might be in what happens after a prestigious piece of art is stolen,” and that is where the story of “The Value” begins. “It became more serious and complex as I worked, with questions arising about class, identity, and how we assign worth to things in our culture, from art and work to people,” Dunn said.

None of the characters, he said, are based on real people, “although two of the characters are siblings and I certainly pulled a lot of that dynamic from my own relationship with my brother.” However, the artist whose work is at the center of the heist and the play is real. Painter E.L Kirchner was among the artists who pioneered the German Expressionist movement in the early 20th century. “His life is beautiful and tragic and, to me, poetic,” Dunn noted. “Truth is, I didn’t know much about him or his work before starting the play. I did some research to find an artist who might fit the needs of the story and stumbled across Kirchner. Now I’m obsessed with him.”

About his own work, he recalled, “I took a playscript analysis class my first year of college, and our final assignment was to write a 10-minute play. We read the plays out loud and some people laughed when I wanted them to laugh, and I’ve been writing plays ever since.”

Dunn went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree from Point Park University, Pittsburgh, and currently teaches theatre at the University of Utah. “Salt Lake is actually a great arts town, with a thriving community of creators who are very supportive of each other,” he said.

He’s written several plays “for youth that have been performed around the intermountain west, several short plays that have been done in Utah and Wyoming, and last year I was commissioned to write a new play for Westminster University here in Salt Lake City called, ‘The Doomsday Device.’ I also write screenplays and currently have a script under option with 1550 Films & Raintree Pictures in Los Angeles,” Dunn said.

What happened with “The Value” came as a total surprise. “All I can recall is that I saw a post online calling for new plays,” while browsing several websites and social media pages that curate theatre opportunities. “So I saw the call from RTC on one of those. It was just a lucky match and good timing,” he said.

“After I submit a play to an opportunity, I don’t think much about it. But every time a ‘Yes’ happens, it feels like a miracle. When Frank and I had our first conversation, I was a bit stunned, so I hope he didn’t feel like I wasn’t excited. You get very used to the rejections,” Dunn said. “It’s the acceptances that I don’t know how to respond to.”

As he awaits opening night here in Rockaway, Dunn said, “I can’t wait. I’m very proud of this play. I’ve worked on it for a long time. But a play is never complete until it has been fully performed for an audience.”

“I’m really looking forward to watching it, to seeing what a director, actors, stage managers and designers can do with it,” he said. “And more than anything else, I’m excited for the play to be in front of people. That’s what every play ultimately needs: an audience.”

When the lights come up onstage on “The Value” at RTC, he, and the audience, will get to see his work fully come to life.