Theatre / Pilot Program

Pilot Program: A Supposition is a play written by Melissa Leilani Larson, first performed in 2015.

Abigail and Jacob Husten are a Mormon couple in their 40s. She's an English professor; he works in HR. They're happily married, aside from the pain point of years of infertility. Then they're called upon to participate in a pilot program to restore polygamy to modern LDS practice.

If you want to see it, there's a Zoom reading on Facebook here.

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Tropes:

• 20 Minutes into the Future: The play debuted in 2015, and is set in 2019. This doesn't appear in the dialogue, only the script ("PLACE: Holladay, Utah. TIME: 2019."). Still, Word of God talks about how the play is positioned in history: The Mormon church ended polygamy under extreme pressure from the US government. If the government decriminalized polygamy, would that change things? At the time the play was written, Utah's marriage laws were loosening. They had recently begun legally recognizing same-sex marriage (Kitchen v. Herbert, 2013) and the Browns of the Reality TV show Sister Wives had challenged Utah's criminal polygamy law and won, having their charges dismissed (Brown v. Buhman, 2013). It seemed somewhat possible that polygamy could be decriminalized in the next few years, so the play was set in 2019.
  Larson: Does this change things? If polygamy is legal, does the church bring it back? I don't think they will, but it started me down a weird dramatical rabbit hole.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: She was almost exactly right. Not 2019, but just one year later in 2020, Senate Bill 102 was signed in, making bigamy only an infraction (ie. on par with a parking ticket) rather than a felony in Utah.
• Ambiguous Ending: It ends without Abigail coming to any firm decisions about her new life. She's not content in the new polygamous marriage, but neither is she thinking of divorce. The author has commented that this is because it's not a play about the long-term outcomes of polygamy, it's about the start, and that any long-term conclusion would retroactively color the beginning. If things improve with time, then all's well that ends well and the initial hardship would be written off as growing pains. If it ends in divorce, then the whole thing was doomed from the start.
  Larson: I feel like that it ends where it ends because answering those questions about where the marriage goes changes what the play is. And there's nothing wrong with that—it's just, what I wanted to do with this play is explore the possibility of it happening to start.
• Anthropic Principle: Abigail has to be the kind of person who would say yes because that's the Inciting Incident of the story.
  Larson: People often ask me, they're like, "Why don't you spend more time on why she [Abigail] says yes and not no?" And I'll tell you straight up: from a dramaturgical perspective, her saying no makes this a very short play.
• Bottle Episode: The play is set entirely in the living room of the Husten home. Only one set is required, and a relatively simple one at that. This, along with its Minimalist Cast, makes it easier for a theatre to put on.
• Brain Bleach: Abigail walks in on Jacob and Heather making out.
  Abigail: I just— I was having a good day. But now I need to rinse out my eyes with bleach.
• Desperately Needs Orders: Downplayed to a realistic degree. Jacob is mild-mannered and biddable, not at all the leader you'd expect from a polygamous patriarch. Abigail and Heather both feel the Spirit calling them to do this. Jacob, in contrast, does not. But the church asked it of him, and Abigail decided she was on board, and so he went along with it.
• Exotic Extended Marriage: Subverted or Inverted—they're polygamous, but it's not meant to be exotic or sensationalized. The play tells its story as small and personal and relatable.
• Happily Married: An important facet is that at the beginning of the play, Abigail and Jacob are a happy, stable couple of over a decade.
  Heather: So many people get married for the wrong reasons. Too fast, outside pressure… You guys are the real deal.
• Has a Type: Jacob has two wives, the second of which was selected specifically for her likeness to the first. Does that mean he has a type? Well… no, actually. Firstly, Jacob didn't pick Heather, and secondly, when he does bond with her, it's over the things they share with each other but not Abigail. They both like musicals (which Abby hates) and driving (she gets motion sick).
• Hourglass Plot: Heather begins the play as a single woman, and ends it as a married mom. Abigail begins as a married woman and then — as she's eclipsed in the relationship — ends the play feeling more like a single woman.
• I Just Write the Thing: The author (a single woman) first envisioned the story as being focused on Heather, as a single woman coming into an established couple. But then Abigail took over the writing process.
  Larson: The play started with a single person entering an already existing, established marriage. But then Abby as a character kind of took over and claimed the play, and it kind of flipped itself.
• I'm Standing Right Here
  Heather: He's your husband.
  Abigail: I'm not giving him to you.
  Heather: Then what are you doing?
  Abigail: Sharing. Him.
  Jacob: Still in the room.
• Innocently Insensitive: Near the end of the play, Heather suggests a family road trip. She and Jacob like driving; Abigail is prone to motion sickness. Heather knows this, though it's apparently slipped her mind. She isn't being mean spirited, but she's also not pausing to give Abigail much consideration.
• Interrupted Intimacy: Abigail walks in on Jacob and Heather making out on the couch. The house rules are that PDA is to be confined to the bedrooms.
• Insecure Love Interest: There's an implied, underlying sense that both Abigail and Heather think polygamy is a "lesser" form of marriage, particularly suited to women who are "damaged goods" in one way or another. Being barren and an old maid respectively, they view themselves as such. When this idea is brought up, it's verbally refuted, but that doesn't banish the idea for either of them. At one point Abigail talks about looking at the damaged goods on the clearance isle at the grocery store, clearly metaphoring them to herself.
  Abigail: Three miscarriages. No luck with in vitro, or adoption. Maybe I'm the wrong wife.
  [later]
  Heather: Are you saying this is my only chance? To get married?
• Jealous Romantic Witness: A common thread among real life non-monogamists is a skeptical or deconstructionist view of jealousy, not taking it at face value. For example, it's not that witnessing their PDA is inherently painful, it's that you're insecure because you haven't received enough affection yourself lately. Such a mindset is absent here. Abigail doesn't try any sideways approaches to jealousy. She faces it very bluntly and head-on, and it's agonizing.
  Abigail: What am I doing here? Watching them, together, it's almost like watching home movies of my marriage, but of scenes I don't remember. […] I swear this is too much… I think of the way he looks at her… The way she looks at him… And it hurts to breathe. I have to fight not to gasp aloud, to give a sign that this—just—hurts.
• Law of Inverse Fertility: Abigail and Jacob really want a baby. After three miscarriages and no luck with IVF or adoption, they've given up hope of that happening. They bring Heather into their marriage in part because they expect she can have a baby. And she does. Heather's pregnancy could be considered a subversion or aversion of this trope—a woman who wants a baby easily has one. From Abigail's point of view, though, the trope is still present (albeit non-standard). She does want Heather to have a baby, but even so it's agonizing to watch.
• Meet the In-Laws: Abigail tells a story of bringing Jacob home for the first time and how her father endorsed him as a Nice Guy.
  Abigail: I've always said Jacob was the good sort. It was a phrase of my father's. When Jake and I started dating seriously, I took him home to meet my parents. It was Thanksgiving, and we got dumped on: almost two feet of snow overnight. In the morning, I found Daddy on the porch watching Jacob shovel the drive. "He beat me to it," Dad said. "I didn't even have to ask him." He turned to look at me and said, "This fellow, he's the good sort." It just stuck with me.
• Minimalist Cast: Abigail Scott, Jacob Husten, and Heather Mendoza—that's it.
• Mission from God: Abigail has turned down two callings before this. When she was first married, they wanted her in the nursery. The second time, she turned down a substitute teaching position simply because she knew the 13-year-olds would drive her crazy and she didn't want to. But this time—when so much more is being asked of her—she says yes.
  Abigail: It doesn't make sense, I know it doesn't. Forty-five minutes later, I'm tied in knots. I'm angry and confused and all over the place. But the moment that he asked, in that second, that breath hanging in the air between him and me— There was a blossom of warmth. A burst of— I don't know. Faith? Maybe it was the Spirit, maybe it was my imagination. But I felt it. That it—this—was the right thing. It was completely terrifying. And now I want to deny that it happened, but I can't. I can't.
• Most Writers Are Writers: Abigail is a writer, and she uses her blog as an outlet. It provides a framing device for Audience Monologues.
• "Near and Dear" Baby Naming: Their baby is named Thomas Scott Husten. Thomas after Heather's favorite uncle, and Scott after Abigail's maiden name. With his father's family name Husten, this gives him one name from each branch of the family.
• Nice Guy: Abigail says this is why Jacob was chosen for the pilot project: he's a good guy, a good husband, a good candidate for Single Woman Seeks Good Man, and would make a good father given the chance.
  Abigail: You're a nice guy, the good guy. Did you ever think that maybe that's the reason this happened to us in the first place?
• Old Maid: Heather is 33, and not married. Within Utah Mormon culture, this is relatively late to be single. She's single by circumstance, not by choice, although she's tried to embrace it. There are things she legitimately likes about being single, but she does also have suppressed longing for a relationship. When Heather asks Abigail and Jacob if they think this is her only chance to get married, they deny it, but that doesn't banish the thought.
  Heather: Do you think I'm that desperate? That lonely?
  Abigail: No—
  Heather: What makes you think I want to be your second wife? Anyone's second wife?
• Religious Stereotype: Averted. The characters are all Mormon—really devout Mormons willing to completely upend their lives for a religious calling. But they're not stereotypical. They're liberal and educated, and written quite subtly. This is part Write What You Know (the author's own demographic) and part because to do otherwise would make the characters less relatable to a general audience and easier to dismiss.
• Third Wheel: Which one of them is the third wheel evolves throughout the course of the story. In the first scene when Heather arrives, Abigail and Heather are close and Jacob is the third wheel. Right after Heather joins the marriage, Abigail and Jacob are close and Heather is the third wheel. After the birth of their son, Heather and Jacob are close and Abigail is the third wheel.
  Abigail: [during the dating period] I don't know which of us was the third wheel; it was like we were taking turns.
• Too Much Alike: As friends, Abby and Heather were drawn to each other because they were alike—You Remind Me Of Myself. But as sister wives it gets… stickier.
• Whole-Plot Reference: Of The Bible story of Sarai and Hagar. An infertile wife picks out another woman to have children with her husband. And it works: the second woman has a son. But then the first wife ends up hurting over it, made doubly painful for the fact that she set this whole thing in motion.
• You're Not My Father: Inverted. In a moment of anger, Heather yells at Abigail that Thomas isn't her son. She says it as an exhausted and frazzled new mom, and apologizes as soon as she's said it. But she can't take it back; Abigail can't unhear it.

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