43
‘MR. WHEELER’S’
By GUY D’ASTOLFO
YOUNGSTOWN
Mr. Wheeler’s is long gone, but the South Side eateries have maintained their place in Rob Zellers’ memory.
He builds on those memories in his new play, “Mr. Wheeler’s.”
Mr. Wheeler’s was a diner and takeout place with two locations on Market Street. Both closed more than a decade ago but they live on in the playwright’s mind.
“I think everyone who lived on the South Side went to one of the two Mr. Wheeler’s,” said Zellers. “I remember both places vividly. In the one across from Stackhouse Oldsmobile you could actually see into the kitchen. For some reason this was endlessly fascinating to me. I always got the same thing: a hamburger and vanilla milkshake.”
In his play, Zellers changes the year to the present and stays true to the reality of the South Side. The neighborhood is in sharp decline and there aren’t many stores left open. Street violence is an everyday threat.
In Zellers’ tale, Mr. Wheeler’s has opened franchises in suburban locations, but the original site is still open, still hanging on by a thread, with a scrappy staff of young people running it.
The play centers around that handful of employees, and rings true with street-savvy dialogue and hard-luck issues. Providing the conflict is a stash of cash found in the basement of the restaurant by an employee.
Zellers, a Boardman native, is on the staff of Pittsburgh Public Theater. He has written several plays, all of which are set in Youngstown.
His play “Harry’s Friendly Service,” set in a downtown Youngstown gas station in the 1970s, was produced by the Pittsburgh Public in 2009. “Harry’s” was set against the backdrop of the closing of the city’s steel mills and the economic turmoil that ensued.
“Mr. Wheeler’s” has gained the attention of three theaters and a literary agent, each of which is studying the script.
Zellers had a special advantage in creating “Mr. Wheeler’s.” He was able to fine-tune it as a selected participant in PlayPenn, an annual month-long play-development conference in Philadelphia.
Zellers returned from PlayPenn last month. While there, he worked with a dramaturge, a director, the five other playwrights selected for the program, and a cast of actors. The result is what Zellers calls “my most muscular script ever.”
Zellers also was selected for the New Harmony Festival in Indiana in May, where he was also able to workshop “Mr. Wheeler’s.”
PlayPenn was an intensive and fruitful experience for Zellers.
“We would write and rehearse all day,” he said. The six playwrights lived in apartments provided by PlayPenn and were given a per diem for expenses.”
His play was given a stage reading early in the workshop which provided a foundation for the development process.
“After the reading, we went back to work,” said Zellers. “Adding and subtracting scenes, developing characters, fixing holes in the plot. Then we had another stage reading.”
Both readings were done before paid audiences and Zellers reported that it was strongly received.
“Mr. Wheeler’s” is firmly in Zellers’ artistic wheelhouse.
“All of my plays are set in Youngstown, and that’s not easy,” he said. “I am sticking to my feelings that this is my calling — chronicling 120-plus years of history of this region.”
Another theme that runs through all of Zellers’ work is the loss of the middle class, usually during a time when drastic changes are under way.
“I am trying to represent the working class,” he said. “Their voice needs to come back into the national debate. I may be tilting at windmills but you can’t write what you don’t feel.”
Appropriately, the dialog in “Mr. Wheeler’s” is crisp and real, and never flowery.
“I am not elegant in the language I use,” said Zellers.
“Mr. Wheeler’s” also manifests an unusual fact about Zellers’ creative process. “Unlike most playwrights, I start with a setting, not a character,” he said. This is likely due to the strong memories of growing up in Youngstown that are burned into his psyche.
The Mr. Wheeler’s in his play is an outpost amid urban devastation, an oasis. The action takes place entirely in the kitchen, where the crew serves up sandwiches and waits on walk-ins and drive-through customers.
“They are scruffy, but they are smart and indomitable,” said Zellers. “It’s a story of perseverance and how moxie can get you somewhere.”
Thanks to PlayPenn, “Mr. Wheeler’s” is taut and to the point ,and Zellers is proud of how it turned out.
“My plays are usually like this,” he said during an interview, demonstrating with his hands meandering across a tabletop. “But ‘Mr. Wheeler’s’ is like this,” he says with his hands moving quickly and in a straight line to the other side. “It’s my least wordy play, my slimmest and most muscular play,” he said.
Zellers also has a couple of other plays under his belt, although neither has attracted the attention of “Mr. Wheeler’s” or “Harry’s Friendly Service.”
Foremost among these is “Smoky Hollow,” which is set in the 1890s in a boarding house in the once-teeming Youngstown neighborhood that is the title.
He also has penned “The Happiness They Seek,” which is a sequel to “Harry’s Friendly Service.” It revisits some of the original characters 20 years later.
Next up for Zellers is a play — possibly a musical — that has been gestating in his mind for a while.
“What is pulling at me now is a journey play, set in the ’60s, which was a formative time for me,” he said. “I was in high school, and there was a lot going on — the Civil Rights era, Vietnam.”
His tale would follow a “dorky” and naive 18-year-old from Youngstown who gets on a bus to visit his grandfather in the deep South. His eyes are opened by the people he meets in his travels.
“This was also a great time for music. There was rock, blues, soul and gospel,” said Zellers, adding that the right composer could further evoke the era with music.