How 90 'profane, playfully dark' minutes changed an Austin playwright's life

Before 2013, Austin playwright Colin Swanson, who writes under the pen name C. Denby Swanson, had enjoyed modest success in her chosen field while earning the rock-solid respect of the theater community.

That's the year when the Drilling Company, a scruffy New York theater group, picked up her comedy about nice Minnesota gangsters, "The Norwegians."

The 90-minute play ran there for a year.

"This profane, playfully dark comedy is often hysterical," read the review in The New York Times. "True, it’s a low-budget production up a steep flight of stairs, but you don’t find 90 minutes of good-hearted laughter at Off-Off-Broadway prices every day."

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You must keep in mind that the Drilling Company is not on Broadway. The group's annual plunge into the classics is called Shakespeare in the Parking Lot.

Still, a show about two women who hire hit men to kill their boyfriends ran for a whole year.

In tough-as-nails New York.

"Norwegians from Norway liked it," Swanson says. "But some Minnesotans walked out."

Since then, the show has been produced across the country, eight times in Ohio. In Minnesota, it became a holiday show. They even wanted to perform outside during the winter.

In 2015, Lara Toner Haddock directed it for Austin Playhouse.

"There is no dearth of memorable, hilarious lines," read the review in the American-Statesman, "that keep the high-energy production rolling along at a rapid pace."

A revival that includes the return of one of the original actors, Ben Wolfe, opens at Austin Playhouse in West Campus this week.

"It's a new draft of the play," Swanson says over coffee. "If you leave a writer with too much time on their hands, they just write more. I wanted to laugh more."

'Oh, no we could never do that'

Austin native Swanson, 53, grew up in Houston and attended that city's arts magnet high school. She still enjoys writing for high school artists, including a commissioned play, "Bad Science," about dating, love, divorce, the internet, the HPV vaccine and Arthur Miller's "The Crucible."

"It's never been produced," Swanson says. It was, however, read aloud at the annual Thespian Festival for high school drama clubs. "The students gave it a rousing ovation. But the look on the theater teachers' faces was, 'Oh no, we could never do that.'"

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Swanson studied at Smith College, the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas and the National Theatre Institute. During the pandemic, she earned her MBA and now works for a nonprofit while raising an 11-year-old foster-to-adopt child.

Swanson has written more than three dozen plays, many of them short. In 1998, she produced her full-length "Waterless Places" at Public Domain. It was her first script to be published and revived in other cities. In 2004, her "Death of a Cat," staged by Salvage Vanguard at the Off Center, included a unforgettable finale that left the audience gasping.

Just 24 hours to write a play

"The Norwegians" started at one of those workshops that have become familiar in the world of writing. Participants were instructed to put together a 10-minute play in 24 hours.

"I got punchy at around 3 a.m. with an 8 a.m. deadline," Swanson says, "At some point, your protective defenses are eliminated. These things came to me: single-syllable names. Something in the dark. Something's wrong. They are doing a hit. It's in Minnesota. And they are super-nice."

That slim premise grew into a full-length play after Swanson decided to become a parent at age 40. Her first foster child had acquired no language skills at age 2-and-a-half.

"Watching him learn the power of language was revolutionary for me," she says. "I had taken it for granted."

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After 10 months, when the boy was returned to his birth family, Swanson did not know how to let him go.

"I didn't think I'd survive," Swanson says. Seeking to help, fellow theater artist Hank Schwemmer called to sing her a lullaby over the phone. "I wrote a monologue in response. It was my first time to write directly to the heart. Without the Band-Aids of spectacle and ambiguity."

That led her to write a full-length version of "The Norwegians," which she sent to the Drilling Company in New York.

"I didn't even know what it was," Swanson confesses. "They thought it was super-funny: 'We're going to do it in March.'"

'Billie Jean King tweeted about it'

For all her success as a playwright, Swanson was not ready for the rough circus of the New York run.

"I mean this was Off-Off-Off-Off-Broadway," she says. "They put it together with chewing gum and Band-Aids. And I think they borrowed the Band-Aids. But it ran a year and celebrities came to see it. Billie Jean King tweeted about it."

The first Central Texas staging took place at Southwestern University, but Austin Playhouse was next in line. Eight years later, it opens the company's season at its temporary West Campus home.

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"I let (director) Lara know about the fourth revision of the script," Swanson says of the published play. "I wanted to recommit to my sense of humor, which is dry and dark. It's hard to read that humor on the page. People will say: 'I don't get this.' Sometimes I took their advice and, actually, it was the right choice in the first place.

"Take the text as a blueprint and trust it."

What's it like to act in 'The Norwegians'?

"It's rare that you get to work with the playwright in the room," says Wolfe, who also appeared in the first Austin Playhouse staging, "and Colin and Lara have allowed us the freedom to keep the discoveries playful and engaging."

“Getting to play a character as unflinching, deeply feeling and take-no-prisoners as Colin’s Betty in the Norwegians is an absolute delight and ton of fun." says Sarah Fleming Walker, new to the show.

"Acting in this is like performing a trapeze act while juggling flaming bowling pins," says actor Lowell Bartholomee. "It can feel like a lot, but the other acrobats are at the top of their game and Colin’s script is your safety net."

One of the sweetest responses came from an actor/server in New York.

"She was a waitress — you know how you can tell — she was also an actor," Swanson says. "So we told her that some of us were actors, too, and that I was a playwright. I gave her my card. 'I know you! You wrote 'The Norwegians'! I use your monologue for all my auditions!"

'The Norwegians'

When: 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 1 p.m. Oct 1 and Oct. 8, 2 p.m. Sept. 25 and Oct. 15

Where: Austin Playhouse West Campus, 405 W. 22nd St.

Cost: Start at $34

Information: austinplayhouse/norwegians

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: 'The Norwegians' ran for a year in New York, now it returns to Austin