North Coast Rep’s ‘Incident’ to Examine Catholic Church’s View on Women – San Diego Union-Tribune

Katie Forgette’s family comedy “Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help” is set in 1973, the year of the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling. Wade. This is not a coincidence.

“I wanted to write something that was fun and retro and not specifically about my life, but set in the world of 1970s Catholicism,” Forgette said. “And also something about what it meant, and still means today, to be a woman.”

In “Incident,” which begins showing next Wednesday at the North Coast Repertory Theatre, the oldest daughter, Linda, of the Irish Catholic O’Shea family, is about to go to graduate school and is very much in tune with the incipient feminist movement of the time. She also tells her younger sister, Becky, about menstruation and where babies come from.

“She’s not feeling particularly generous,” Forgette says of Linda, who is played by Samantha Gorjanc in North Coast Rep, “but she also knows the facts need to come out. She doesn’t mince words.”

Thanks to the precocious Becky (Abbi Hoffpauir), that frank conversation between sisters ends up being shared at the 13-year-old girl’s Catholic school. This is where the “incident” shakes the parish.

Forgette said she herself comes from “a pretty traditional Catholic family” and attended parochial school for 12 years. It was during these years that she encountered the different rules for women.

“One of my first disappointments in life,” she said, “was when I was in first grade and I thought I wanted to be a priest. They told me I couldn’t be a priest because I was a girl. Telling a child that they will never be able to do something because they are the wrong sex is devastating.

“That’s how it all started for me: finding out through the church what you could and couldn’t do.”

This trend simmers beneath the comedy “Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help,” which debuted five years ago at the Chenango River Theater in upstate New York.

“A few theaters asked if we could tone down the language,” Forgette said, “which I thought was a strange request. I have already discovered two young women talking this way, bothering people more than two young men. (The play) is also about female puberty, which for some people seems to have a higher “ick factor.”

Writing for and about women is important to Forgette, who is currently busy with the world premiere of her play “Mrs. Loman is Leaving” at the ACT Contemporary Theater in his hometown of Seattle. The play is about Willy Loman’s widow from Arthur Miller’s classic play “Death of a Salesman.”

“I try to write plays that have more female roles or at least the same number (of male roles),” said Forgette, a longtime actor and playwright, “and also roles for women over 40, over 50, over 60 years old. There aren’t enough of them.”

Jenny Sullivan is making her North Coast Rep directorial debut with “Incident,” whose cast also includes Erin Noel Grennan and Tom Dugan as the O’Shea parents (Dugan plays multiple roles) and Shana Wride as Aunt Terri.

‘Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help’

When: Previews begin on Wednesday, October 23rd. It opens on October 26th and runs until November 24th. 7pm, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays; 8pm, Fridays and Saturdays; 2pm Saturdays and Sundays

Where: North Coast Repertory Theatre, 987 Lomas Santa Fe Drive, Solana Beach

Tickets: $52 to $74

Telephone: 858-481-1055

Online: northcoastrep.org

Originally published: October 18, 2024 at 6am