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SARAH SCHULMAN

SARAH SCHULMAN

Sarah Schulman
Writer, Director

ACTIVIST, AUTHOR, AIDS HISTORIAN

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A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice.

"This is not reverent, definitive history. This is a tactician’s bible." --Parul Sehgal, The New York Times

"A masterpiece of historical research and intellectual analysis that creates many windows into both a vanished world and the one that emerged from it, the one we live in now." --Alexander Chee

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MAGGIE TERRY 

A lot of Americans have tried to get sober, or watched a friend or lover make or break it in recovery, but what happens when your personal disaster is a reflection of America's chaos?  These days sobriety isn't just about abstaining, because the big man in charge spends more time on Twitter than at briefings so we're all getting trashed. Change becomes a series of recognitions, inside and out, that we're in this emergency together, so Recovery is needed on every front. Maggie Terry was a leggy WASP with a gold plated background where hiding pain in a martini was mother's milk. She tried to go underground into the NYPD where no one would be able to read her code of privilege, and she had a good run. But it's over now, in a big way. Forever. And the same goes for the American Dream. This is a series about Getting Real.  Getting straight means noticing the real mess, and working the steps means striving to be one of the grown-ups who has to clean it all up. Pulling America back together again is the easy part, looking in the mirror is the real act of courage. But we all gotta do it.  Or else...

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MAGGIE TERRY is what happens when a golden girl never takes care of business and wakes up one day in her forties, in chaos, where her marriage, her career, her friendships and her child are all gone.  Since she had more than a decade as a Detective for the NYPD, you’d think Maggie would be able to track down the culprit, but it’s a case of perpetrator-in-the-mirror. The sad fact is that Maggie herself is the source of the problem. 

She thinks she has one goal: To get her daughter ALINA back. But staying off drugs is not enough.  She has to convince her indifferent ex FRANCES to let her back into Alina’s life, and newly re-married Frances has no motive to bite.

So, Maggie has to prove herself. And that means getting a life worth proving. Fortunately, her ex-college professor MIKE owes her big time.  Maggie tried to warn him that his son was messed up on drugs but Mike couldn’t face the truth, and when his son OD’d, he turned his pain into devotion…to listening…to Maggie. Yes, he’s a savior type, but that’s what she needs to stay afloat, and he needs her to make it. Mike, and her Narcotics Anonymous sponsor RACHEL G, a trans woman dentist who always returns phone calls, are there for Maggie when she can’t even find a self to believe in. The third tier in Maggie’s support system is NICK STAMOS, the Greek corner deli guy who is the only constant witness in her shredded daily life.

Now that Maggie’s been kicked off the force for drugs and lost her badge, Mike hires her as a private dick for his law firm, over the objections of his uptight lady partner ENID who doesn’t trust addicts, she married three of them. In fact no one at the firm is happy about Mike’s latest rescue, especially not CRAIG WILLIAMS, the Black ivy-educated IT guy who has enough stress already with his in-laws and resents having Maggie attached as his associate on a really big case: ACTRESS STRANGLED. He’d rather go it alone.

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Over the course of the story Maggie crawls in and out of NA meetings, chases down the killer of JAMIE WAGNER, a troubled, impulsive young actress found strangled, tries to stay on her co-workers’ good sides and tries to rebuild her life from less than scratch.

All this is taking place against the backdrop of a New York City with its own Borderline Apocalypse.  Gentrification is suffocating its energy and spirit. The sea of individual beautiful faces is getting drained and replaced with homogeneity. And the country is in even deeper trouble. The President is so insane that everyone is confused. How can people strive to be fair and just, when the big daddy is lying multiple times a day?  And Maggie’s own daddy is not much better, constantly calling her from bars and inviting her out for drinks, just as the President is creating shut-downs, moving around troops, and threatening wars.  There are so many lies, no one can keep up, and so each person is out there on their own, really alone. 

As Maggie sticks with the 12-Step world- her only hope for some resurrection- she gets to know other people at the meetings, she learns to now-and-then step out of the self-involvement of self-blame and listen to the ways that other people construct their lives. There are times when she barely listens, and other times where something someone says opens up a new door, either to Maggie’s quest to hold Alina in her arms again, or to understand who really killed Jamie Wagner. It’s a slog, but she tries. And we all learn together that trying sometimes adds up to that elusive road to RECOVERY, or at least that nothing is going to happen at all if no one really tries. And the viewer gets to share in the real ways that Recovery actually works, that slowly, slowly Maggie crawls out of herself and starts to understand that other people are real. 

But there is one more layer to this story: Beyond Maggie’s Search For Family, beyond her efforts to please and win approval At The Office, beyond her inherent smarts and nose for details towards Solving the murder of Jamie Wagner, there is one more story that Maggie needs to uncover.  What really happened at the NYPD that underlies all this pain? What really happened to her long-term work partner Julio? Why did he die? And how is she implicated? 

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The more Maggie Terry learns about herself, the more she has to take responsibility. But part of growing up at age 42 is learning that the responsibility is not all yours alone.  It’s too easy to fold under a sea of self-blame, and a lot harder to see the people around us also play a part. There is a dynamic to accountability. We’re all not perfect, and we’re all not shit. It’s the understanding of the common human flaw, the acceptance of what we owe and what we give, that is often so hard to grasp.  Especially when we’re living in a national cataclysm of grandiosity and punishment. So this is Maggie Terry’s narrative arc: Be an actual person, even if those in charge of our futures can’t do the same.

Sarah Schulman
Writer, Director
Sarah Schulman

Sarah Schulman is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, nonfiction writer and AIDS Historian.  She is the author of several books including The Gentrification of the Mind, Conflict Is Not Abuse, and The Cosmopolitans. Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at CUNY, Schulman’s honors include a Guggenheim in Playwriting and a Fulbright in Judaic Studies. She also cofounded the ACT UP Oral History Project. She imagines television shows that she would like to watch.

For two seasons Sarah has been curating FIRST MONDAYS: New Works in Progress where some of our most exciting writers share early stages of works that won't be available to the public for months or years.  The series is hosted by Performance Space New York and McNally-Jackson Bookstore.

 

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LYNNE SACHS

LYNNE SACHS
LILA ZEMBORAIN

LILA ZEMBORAIN