Michael Walek
On Thursday, February 13, as part of the 2020 First Light Festival, the EST/Sloan Project is presenting two public readings—at 3 pm and 7 pm— of HAVE YOU MET JANE GOODALL & HER MOTHER? by Michael Walek. The first public reading of the play occurred as part of the 2019 First Light Festival. The play dramatizes the first months of twenty-six-year-old Jane Goodall’s first expedition to study chimpanzees in Africa. But why did she bring her mother? To learn why let’s ask the playwright:
(Interview by Rich Kelley)
It was almost exactly a year ago that HAVE YOU MET JANE GOODALL & HER MOTHER? had its first public reading as part of the 2019 First Light Festival. How has the play changed since then?
This is an entirely new play. After a great note session with Linsay and Graeme*, I decided to take the play in a completely different direction. It is a screwball comedy instead of a bio-play. More Noel Coward than Merchant-Ivory.
What prompted you to write this particular play?
Jane Goodall and her mother Margaret “Vanne” Myfanwe Joseph in camp (Photo: Hugo Van Lawick, National Geographic Society)
Growing up, my mom loved Jane Goodall. We had her books in the house, and I thought I knew her story. A few years ago, I learned that when the Tanzanian government allowed Jane Goodall to study chimpanzees, they required she bring a chaperone, so she brought her mother. The idea of a scientist bringing her mother on her first expedition sounded like a play I wanted to write.
What research did you do?
Tons of research. I read everything I could get my hands on from her journals to her family’s letters.
Your play creates vignettes that dramatize the first months Jane Goodall spends with her mother leading her first expedition to study chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) in 1960. How did you figure out what they sounded like? Did you work with her field notes?
Luckily, many of Jane and Vanne’s letters from that time were published, so it was easy to get a sense of their writing style, words they liked, nicknames they used. I found them to be utterly charming.
Is the relationship you dramatize between Jane and her mother your invention or based on something Jane wrote? They are often quite funny. Is that from your imagination or based on your research?
Before I did my research, I assumed that any child living in a tent with her parent for five months would find it a stressful situation, only to discover that Jane and Vanne adored each other and never really fought. Suddenly, I had to write a play about two funny, kind people who encouraged and supported each other.
It’s always seemed a bit preposterous that the famed anthropologist Louis Leakey would choose a secretary with no academic background or field experience to lead an expedition into the thick mountainous terrain the chimpanzees inhabited. And be able to get funding for her. Why do you think he chose Jane?
Well, she wasn’t his first choice. Jane only found this out years later, but Leakey tried to get another scientist to go into the field, but she declined. I think a lot has been made out that she was “just a secretary.” She went on a human fossil dig with Leakey and worked with him at his museum in Kenya. She was a bit more qualified, but it makes a better story if she’s this random typist.
Jane Goodall grooming David Greybeard, the first chimp to lose his fear of her. (Photo: National Geographic Creative/Hugo Van Lawick)
Your play focuses on the first months Jane spent in Tanganyika in 1960 and what she discovered as the first person to study chimpanzees in the wild—but also her frustration at not being able to make the major discovery she had hoped for that would justify Louis Leakey’s faith in her. When did her breakthrough observation about how chimps make tools to collect termites actually occur?
In the play, all the facts about science are true. Jane really did make her discovery in the final weeks of her first stay in Tanganyika after her mother went home.
Much has been made of how a plush toy chimpanzee Jane was given as a child may have determined her career. What do you make of that?
Young Jane Goodall with Jubilee (Photo: Courtesy of Jane Goodall Institute)
Again, I think this is some hindsight mythologizing. Jane would’ve studied birds if it was the assignment. It just happened to be chimpanzees.
Rewriting is probably among the most under-appreciated, or under-discussed, aspects of playwriting. When you begin a rewrite, do you have a particular goal in mind: give the characters more personality, make it funnier, add more science, make the transitions sharper?
This is an incredibly collaborative process, so the director and the actors and I spend a lot of time talking about the play. They all have incredible observations, so each night I have plenty of things to work on and rewrite.
Have you ever gone camping for an extended time? Spent any time observing nature? Done field research?
I absolutely hate camping, and the outdoors, which I realize makes it hysterical I wrote this play.
You’ve been a member of EST’s Youngblood collective. How has that influenced your playwriting?
One of the best things about Youngblood is how radically different everyone’s writing is. I think Youngblood pushed me to write more like myself. I am very lucky to have been part of the collective.
Have you written other plays about science?
Yes. I wrote numerous plays for the Youngblood Science brunch and they were always rejected.
When did you first know you were a playwright?
My high school had a play contest my senior year. I wrote a play, and it won. I wasn’t invited to rehearsals, so I just showed up one night and saw my play. There was a twist ending, and the audience gasped. I was completely hooked.
*Linsay Firman is Associate Director and Graeme Gillis is Program Director of The EST Sloan Project
The 2020 EST/Sloan First Light Festival runs from January 16 through March 12 and features readings and workshop productions of ten new plays. The festival is made possible through the alliance between The Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, now in its twenty-second year.
