Couple teams up to write for stage

He writes the words, she writes the music.

T.M. Sell and his wife Nancy Warren have teamed up on two play manuscripts a year since 2001, when they opened the Breeders Theater company in Seattle.

“Seattle’s a big theater town, so it’s crawling with people with theater degrees,” Sell said. “We’ve been very fortunate.”

With the couple’s background it’s a natural fit.

Sell was a journalist for over 20 years, and is now a political economy and journalism professor at Highline Community College in Des Moines, Wash. Warren graduated from the University of Puget Sound with a music degree and has 40 years of studying piano behind her.

The couple came to Bigfork last weekend to see the Bigfork Community Players’ rendition of Sell’s play, Prairie Heart.

It’s one of a handful of their plays that’s made its way into the hands of directors outside of their theater. Prairie Heart also debuted in a Minot, N.D. theater, which they went to see as well.

Sell said the play has good reach because the play is accessible.

“People see themselves, they see their ancestors,” Sell said. “Every time we do the show, someone comes up and says ‘well, that’s my family story.’”

Prairie Heart is a little outside the typical plays that Sell writes.

He said he usually writes political satires, such as Withering Heights, a play he wrote a couple years ago that uses Jane Austen novels as inspiration for a satire about the banking crisis, or Crazy/Naked, which pulls from personal experience and depicts an election that is won by a mental patient with a strong campaign and monetary backing.

While Prairie Heart has some comedic moments, it’s a love story that revolves around Norwegian homesteaders who came to make their way in North Dakota.

In Minot the play was interpreted differently than in Bigfork, Sell said. He felt the community players rendition was a little closer to what he had in mind.

“But that’s okay,” Sell said. “The director is in the position to try to figure out what the playwright actually means.”

Sell and Warren both think that’s the beauty of a play. It can change depending on who’s acting and who’s directing. When they write a play for Breeders Theater, Sell and Warren often make changes based on how they see it’s interpreted by specific actors.

For Warren, she can write music based on what she knows a certain actor’s strengths are. For Sell, if he sees his words are interpreted differently than he wants them to be, he can change them so they reflect exactly what he means to say.

“That’s what you can do when it’s yours,” Warren said.