Community is a word we see bandied about a lot these days. It is used to sell products, memberships in organizations promising belonging while asking for money, and loyalty to the home team or the home religion. Community is much in demand and difficult for us to feel.
When faith in government, local or federal is eroded, shared spiritual beliefs are used to get votes, and broken families are the norm, we yearn for the ties that will bind us together, to link our hearts and spirits so that we belong. We crave something that can form the glue that will provide togetherness.
Waitress takes place in a diner in a small town, at some point in the vast distance between countless other faraway points. The barrenness of the landscape echoes the barrenness of lives lived in transit and lives that service those in transit. What do the characters share in Adrienne Shelly’s great film, amplified by Jessie Nelson’s irresistible book and Sara Bareilles’ delicious score? Is there an alchemy, a magic chemistry that can make that elusive elixir of community? Could it turn out to be the very simplest of concoctions? Sugar … butter … flour? Is the complex solution to Don McLean’s wailing lament for connection in America as simple as pie?
Waitress celebrates the most ancient of reasons people assemble – to nourish with food. And it celebrates the women who have always made it happen. We have come together for eons to eat, from prehistoric times around the fire to the checkered cloth backyard BBQ. We are calmed by the warmth of food, the connection to stories of the day, the hunt, the gathering, the building of shelter, the search for safety for the children. We are bound together by the most ancient of all rituals. We hold hands, share a moment of gratitude, and break bread together. We clean up after, and lie around talking, singing, laughing. The pie in Waitress IS the blessing of community.
In Waitress, there are a dozens of pie names that serve as take-off points for tackling dozens of thorny problems. Looking for love, losing love, finding it again, losing, fearing, the pain of change and growth. It would be spoiling the fun to mention a single one of the pie names here. They are funny and make us laugh. But listen a bit closer and you will hear the heartbeat of life. As this virtuoso of pie brings forth wonders passed down by her mother and her mother’s mother, she brings change, wonder, healing and community.
-Bill English
Artistic Director, San Francisco Playhouse
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