Bryan Harnetiaux

In 1997, 50 years after Jackie Robinson broke the color line in major league baseball, Spokane Civic Theatre Playwright-in-Residence, Bryan Harnetiaux, was working on a new play for Civic’s 1997 – 1998 Studio Theatre Season. In the midst of this work, he picked up, for casual reading, Arnold Rampersad’s Jackie Robinson: A Biography. This book “grabbed him by the throat.” As a playwright, lawyer and life-long baseball fan, he was stunned at how little he really knew about the story leading up to this iconic event in American history. With the blessing of then-executive director Jack Phillips, Bryan abandoned the current play-in-progress and began intensive research to determine whether Jackie Robinson’s epic journey could be brought to life on the stage. What he discovered was a compelling need to tell the story of how this seismic shift in American culture came about.

Fifty-eight year old Augie Harper, a marine sniper retired on disability, returns to his hometown for his
40th high school reunion. He is reunited with his childhood friend Frankie, part minister - part standup
comic, who is now terminally ill. After a reunion event, a drunk Augie breaks into his old family
home in the middle of the night, while Frankie is outside asleep in the rental car. Augie is intent on
retrieving a now valuable baseball card he secreted under the kitchen sink as a child. However, he’s
caught searching for the baseball card by his younger sister, April, who, it turns out, never left the
home. It is the first time they have seen each other in 40 years.

With Augie's unexpected return, April begins experiencing manifestations of their parents, Jake and
Ruth, who died in a “murder-suicide,” not long after Augie left home. At this same time, Augie is
forced to come to terms with his abandonment of April, when he joined the military to escape the
intolerable and abusive conditions at home.

At odds with April, and told that his baseball card is long gone, Augie is about to leave when he passes
out. April duct tapes him to a chair. While doing so, she relives a time long ago with Frankie, when
he tried to help her run away. Augie awakes and is protesting wildly when Frankie stumbles in and,
despite being gravely ill, helps both April and Augie tear down the false narratives each have
developed in order to endure daily life. As this unfolds, April's manifestations of the dead parents
increasingly bedevil her. Ultimately, Augie reveals that he left his sister despite suspecting she was
being abused. In turn, April faces the truth that after her father killed her mother she killed her father.
With this revelation, the last of the manifestations disappear. In the final moments April and Augie
leave together, and Frankie dies.

This is a two-act play set in Montana that pits wilderness against civilization, the environment
against industry, the individual against community, and brother against brother. It is a 5-
character (3M, 2W) non-naturalistic drama. The basic plot line involves brothers Digger and
Frank Monaghan of Butte, Montana. Digger Monaghan worked the mines throughout Montana,
the last of a legendary line of explosive experts. The mines are played out now, toxic relics of
another era. Digger has set up shop above ground as a political commentator on a 500-watt, lowband radio station out of Ennis, Montana. He has a following and an ax to grind about the new
scourge on Montana’s landscape - tourism. In addition, his main target is an amusement park
being developed out of West Yellowstone, Montana - by brother Frank. In his battle he allies
himself with Eve Colter, a writer and naturalist who is a direct descendent of explorer John
Colter.

This is a political play: At its most abstract it is about stewardship; at its most personal it is
about each character’s fidelity to his or her belief system.

Vesta is a 90-minute full-length play that examines the last five years of the life of the title
character, and the impact of her illness and death on her family, particularly her daughter and
granddaughter. It is a 7-character, non-naturalistic drama that ultimate examines aging and death
in this country. Vesta principally focuses upon the personal and cultural conflicts that impair
understanding and acceptance of death, in the context of three generations of women seeking to
act courageously in the face of the inevitable.

Vesta first received an amateur production in 1996, and in 1999 was selected for the Lark
Theatre’s Playwrights Week, and given a professional staged reading, resulting in significant
revisions to the script. In February 2007, Vesta received an equity waiver production at Capitol
Hill Arts Center in Seattle, Washington; the play was directed by Allen Fitzpatrick, with noted
actress Megan Cole in the title role.

Sixty-eight year-old Boomer, Gil Everette, has had a heart attack, and now has congestive heart
failure. His daughter, Nan, has arranged for a medical social worker to come to Gil’s home to
discuss his options when another health care crisis occurs. What follows is an intimate family
dialogue between Gil and his three adult children about his choices, guided by the health care
professional. The focus for exploring Gil’s wishes is a physician's orders form providing various
treatment options; i.e. a POLST form. See generally www.polst.org (website for National
POLST Paradigm Program); www.wsma.org/patients/polst.html (state form developed by
Washington State Medical Association POLST program).
Dusk explores with humor and humanity the medical, ethical and spiritual facets of this difficult
but necessary conversation. It premiered at Spokane Civic Theatre in Spring, 2007, and local
theatre critic Jim Kershner remarked:
If you have ever lived through this kind of difficult family decision, you know the
conflicting emotions it can unleash. In just a bit over an hour, Harnetiaux distills nearly
the entire spectrum of these emotions. (…)
…this play delivers exactly what it promises. It puts you inside what feels like a real,
honest, family crisis, and it makes you grapple with an issue that will be even more
common as the baby boomer generation comes of age.

Bobby Alexander, at 51 years old, has lost his extended medical battle with colon cancer, and is
now in end-stage liver failure. Throughout this struggle Bobby's wife, Lee, has been at his side,
step-by-step. However, Bobby wants to accept a referral for in-home hospice care, and Lee is not
ready to give up the fight. This may be in part due to her intensely competitive nature as an
NCAA women's basketball coach. Ultimately, hospice becomes involved, and helps the family
navigate through a host of issues that confront them in Bobby's final days. Holding On —
Letting Go is an honest, often humorous, yet heartrending look at a family forced to come to
terms with the end of a life, and saying good bye.

The System (2M,1W)- a criminal defendant charged with murder must decide whether to take the prosecutor’s unexpected plea offer as the jury is prepared to return it’s verdict.

Mea Culpa (2M, a boy about eight years old and a man in his late 30s) - young boy makes his first confession, circa 1960s, and must confront the notion of sin and moral responsibility.

Meta…(a high school student and a retiring public library reference librarian, not gender specific) - a desperate high school student seeks help from an embittered reference librarian on their last day of work before retirement.

Office Hours (2W; drama) - a book reviewer accuses a renowned college professor of plagiarism of her father’s manuscript, with surprising results.