Pulitzer-winning ‘Between Riverside and Crazy’ was a mission of love for the playwright

Talk about a passion project. Director Stephen DiMenna first saw Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Between Riverside and Crazy” in 2014 in New York and was so taken with its poetry and pathos that he sought to bring it to Pillsbury House Theatre in Minneapolis, where he was a company member.

But the set requirements, including a three-room apartment, proved too much for the space. DiMenna shopped the play around. Park Square Theatre, where his former mentee Flordelino Lagundino had become artistic director, agreed to stage it in 2019. But Lagundino and the company soon parted ways, putting the production on ice and the company on life support.

Park Square then merged with SteppingStone Theatre and “Crazy” was scheduled for 2023. Fate struck again as the theater faced an existential crisis that necessitated canceling the rest of its season, including “Crazy.”

In desperation, the Park Square board asked DiMenna to do a salvation vision plan for the company as an exercise. After his presentation, the board hired him to revive the St. Paul playhouse.

“I told them that they had to rebrand and focus on contemporary American plays with perhaps an occasional classic,” DiMenna said.

“Crazy” fits that bill.

The show concerns an ex-New York cop who is dealing with a lawsuit against his former department, a threatened eviction from his rent-stabilized apartment plus houseguests and a recently paroled son.

Guirgis based the officer on his Egyptian father and wrote the play with a practical purpose. He wanted to cheer up his friend, actor Stephen McKinley Henderson, who was considering quitting the stage.

“I told him, ‘You can’t retire because I’m writing two plays for you — one where you’re the lead and one where you’re supporting.’ I was like so get your [expletive] together and I’ll work on the plays, and he was like, ‘All right, brother.’”

We caught up with Guirgis, a regular on HBO’s “Winning Time” and a close collaborator of the late actor Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Q: You have such a facility with obscenities, not just in your plays but also in titles such as “The [Expletive] with the Hat” and “Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven,” I wonder if Samuel Jackson is a godfather.

A: Ha. In terms of cultural influences, I grew up in New York in the ’70s on the Upper West Side, so I spent my nights in a middle-class neighborhood. But from kindergarten through eighth grade, I went to school up in Harlem. I was in both worlds and never felt like I belonged completely in either. I learned to listen a lot and to imitate other people’s behavior.

Q: How much of “Crazy” is biography and how much is embroidery?

A: It’s true I moved in with my dad after my mom died. But he was an Egyptian restaurant manager, not an African American cop. It was a really fraught emotional time in the house. And I had a friend who had some troubles down South, so he came up to stay with me and he got along great with my dad. He never had a father, so it was like a surrogate father-son relationship. And I got a dog because everyone said if you don’t have something for him to take care of, he’s going to die. He didn’t immediately take to the dog but he loves feeding things.

Q: How did you get to the cop?

A: Well, that springs from the “color of the day” case [in 1994 when a uniformed white police officer, Richard Del-Debbio, shot undercover Black transit officer Peter Robinson four times on the subway]. The city wanted to put the whole episode to bed and claim it had nothing to do with race and Robinson got tricked into doing something that they could use to show that it wasn’t. Well, I always thought I might write about it someday and then I found myself writing the play; I called Lynn Nottage because I was writing about a Black family and she was like, “Stephen, write the play.”

Q: It’s fascinating how fiction and facts fuse because the apartment in “Crazy” is so harrowing and tense.

A: That’s real. I almost got my dad killed once. After my mother died, I didn’t leave the house for like four months because I was convinced that I would come home to find him dead. But I owed a script to a producer, and he rented a little cabin in East Hampton for me to go write for a weekend. I was nervous to leave my dad. But the guy that was staying there was solid. As soon as I left, my friend who’d been sober just lost his sobriety, and drank all the liquor in the house. He ordered heroin and a prostitute but didn’t have any money. I guess he started to try to have sex with the prostitute and she called her pimp downstairs. He came upstairs and almost knocked my dad down. The pimp was holding a gun and said, “I should shoot everyone in this apartment.” He laughed. My dad was in shock. But the guy who caused all these problems was passed out. About an hour later, the building super came. They’d been trying to kick us out and now they had reasons.

Q: That apartment has a lot of history. Do you still live in it?

A: Yes. My dad lived here for four years after my mom passed. He passed in his bed with me and my sister at his side, with the dog nestled by his other side and my friend Elizabeth. It was peaceful. We had a few misadventures for sure.

Q: A craft question, how do you regard your characters when you’re writing?

A: I occasionally do writing workshops and teaching, and I always say you’ve got to have love for your character. I couldn’t write Donald Trump right now and that’s my own failing. I try to find empathy in all people.

Q: How has your life changed with this play?

A: Well, the most practical thing may be how I’m treated in my building. There’s only a few of us rent-control people left. Now it’s mostly in these new people in expensive apartments paying five, six times what I pay for shorter leases. It used to be that you know all your neighbors, but now it’s extremely impersonal. Well, there was a neighbor who lived across the hall, and he would never say anything back when I said hello. A month or two after the prize was announced, I get in the elevator and see it’s that guy, so I don’t even bother saying hello. I just push 8 and we’re going up. Then he said, “Excuse me, are you the fellow that won the Pulitzer Prize?” I suddenly got respect, and I didn’t even care that he was a hypocrite. I’m just glad they know that all the different-looking people visiting are my friends.

When: 7 p.m. Wed.-Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. Ends June 8.

Where: Park Square Theatre, 20 W. 7th Place, St. Paul.

Tickets: $25-$60. 651-291-7005 or parksquaretheatre.org.