Playing together works for 'Sex Please' co-authors

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The playwrighting husband-and-wife team of Michael Parker and Susan Parker of Venice have collaborated to hilarious effect on the 1-year-old farce "Sex Please, We're 60," which will open the Royal Palm Players season with a four-day run beginning Nov. 19. Since it made its stage debut just a year ago in California, the play published by Samuel French in New York has been performed by more than 20 times by production companies as far away as Australia. The Parkers combine his British sense of humor with her natural vivacity to create memorable characters and laugh-out-loud dialogue.

They discuss how their latest hit play came to be and whether a farce can be too funny for the audience.

Question: Has "Sex Please, We're 60" met your expectations?

Michael Parker answer: Oh, yes. After its world premiere in September 2008, we rewrote it and didn't get it into print until March. For a play that's been out there only seven months, it's off to a very fast start.

Q: Can a play or farce be too funny?

Michael Parker A: When we first wrote it and went out to do the world permiere in Hemet, Calif., about a year ago, we watched the audience in Act II and they were laughed out. They were just exhausted. They could not laugh any more. And we're saying to each other, this is no good. It's too funny. We have to slow it down. It's the first time ever I've said, trotting out a new play, it's too funny. The audience can't take any more. Hopefully it will work that way in Boca Grande.

Q: How did you fix the problem?

A: A major rewrite after the world premiere.

Q: How long does it take to write a play?

A: Everybody asks that. Probably it would take a year to 15 months to come up with the plot and the characters and write the dialogue in three months. Coming up with what to write about is always the hard part.

Susan Parker: The beauty together on something like that, for me, is he'll take one character and I'll take the other. And we'll really visualize the character and understand the character and keep the language true to that person. He'll come up with one line and he's on roll with the character and I'm on a roll and we just kind of back and forth and its almost like acting it out right there as you're writing it.

Q: What's the secret of writing a good farce?

Michael Parker: So many writers of modern farce, I find anyway, have good ideas, nice plots, but there are no characters. They're not interesting people. They're just actors on stage.

Q: Your play has just four nights to win over Boca Grande. Are there any extra pressures over such a limited engagement?

Susan Parker: It's always nervous the first time it's out there because you don't know, after you've put your heart and soul into it. You're wondering if it's really funny. Then when they laugh, you're like, yeah! We did it! We wrote it for people to laugh. That's all we want the play to do; that people will walk away laughing.

Q: How did you two meet?

Michael Parker: Let me tell this story.

Susan Parker: He loves this story.

Michael Parker: Aug. 1, 2000, I had been invited as a guest director to direct one of my plays at a Theater Guild in Racine. I used to tour the comuntry directing. And Sue came to audition. I saw this gorgeous creature, I'm down at the front with papers and people and all sorts of things and I keep looking behind me at this gorgeous girl and kept saying to myself: Oh God, I hope she can act. And she could. I gave her the part and she was brilliant. It all started there.

Susan Parker: He didn't call me up until about five minutes before the audition closed.

Michael Parker: Saved the best for last.

Q: So you landed the part of Fiona, a high-class hooker, in Michael's play "The Sensuous Senator," inspired by Sen. Gary Hart's scandal with Donna Rice. But there was a catch, wasn't there?

Susan Parker: I wondered how I was going to explain my role to my fourth-grade class at Englewood Elementary.

Q: After five years of marriage, you've written two plays together. How did that happen given that Susan had never done anything like that before meeting you?

Susan Parker: When I met Mike he said: Hey do you want to write a play together? And I said sure. Then he said do you want to help direct it together? And I'm like, sure! I'm always up for a good time once in awhile

Q: What did you see in Susan?

Michael Parker: Lot of talent.

Q: What's next for you two?

Michael Parker: I know what it would be for me. We have yet to break into film and television. I see, in all modesty, a lot of rubbish. I think our stuff is better. We hope somehow, some way, some day, to move into that area.

Q: What is your greatest talent as writers?

A: We can create heavy-duty laughter. We really can. We are good at laughter.

Susan Parker: I'll never forget this. At one of our plays, this little old lady walked past and she said: This is the first time I've laughed since my husband died. That just hits you. I'm glad we could make her laugh, you know.