Exclusive from INSIDE magazine
THE FAMILY PLAY
Author Alison Bechdel reveals
what it was like to see her
very personal graphic memoir
Fun Home transformed into
a Tony®-winning Broadway
musical by the award-winning
team of Jeanine Tesori and
Lisa Kron.
4 CENTERBILL • NOVEMBER 2017
Photo by Elena Seibert
In 2015, an innovative, poignant and bold
little musical swept the Tony Awards®, netting
Best Musical, Best Score, Best Book and Best
Direction.
An impressive musical adaptation of an
acclaimed graphic memoir by an underground
lesbian icon, Alison Bechdel, Fun Home is built
around her father’s suicide, a funeral home
(the “fun home” of the title), the social torture
of being gay in a straight world and a woman’s
examination of these family dynamics – but is it
dark and heavy? No. It’s a sweet story of an
earnest person’s role in a complicated family,
the misfi rings of familial love and the awkward
stumbling toward an understanding of our true
selves.
INSIDE MAGAZINE: There are a lot
of children who loved fathers who had major
unresolved issues and emotional secrets. Perhaps
that’s the universal appeal of Fun Home, that it’s a
family story that touches on that confusion. In the
time between publishing the book and the book’s
success, did you suspect the family relationships
would be so relatable?
ALISON BECHDEL No! I had no idea that
was going to happen! It felt like such a particular,
idiosyncratic, unique, weird story. I couldn’t imagine
who was going to relate to it. I was trying to envision
my audience as you’re supposed to when you’re a
writer, and I was thinking about the audience for
my comic strip. But, they wouldn’t like it because it
was too weird … it was asking something else of my
reader. So, I decided to write the book for myself. I
was my audience. For whatever reason, that thinking
paved the road for other people to relate.
IM: So, your very dense, very literary, very
enjoyable and gut-wrenching personal story
became a hit Broadway musical. That must have
been a surreal experience.
AB: I saw it evolving slowly. It wasn’t a Broadway
thing at fi rst. It was happening at The Public Theater
downtown. After years of development … I hadn’t
seen any of it, and my fi rst experience of it was that
Lisa and Jeanine sent me a CD of a workshop and
a script. So, it was me in my offi ce listening to the
CD and reading a script. I hadn’t known what to
expect, but it was so moving to have my family
brought to life like that. It was a year after that that
I saw a workshop of the play. It was really powerful.
IM: When you saw the actors performing you and
your family members, how was that experience for
you as the real Alison Bechdel?
AB: In a way, I felt like I was getting a taste of
my own medicine. laughs I’d written about my
family all these years, and here I was being turned
into a character. Maybe because I am a writer and
that transmutation of life into art is something I
understand well, I adjusted pretty quickly to it. It
wasn’t exactly me, it wasn’t exactly my family … but,
it was in a strange way. These characters captured
the essence of who my family was.