I read an article in the paper years ago about Helen Golay and Olga Rutterschmidt, two old women indicted for multiple murders and insurance fraud. It seemed so odd and sad, so I followed their story as it unfolded over time. When I found out they had planned the whole thing but that the details were still unknown, I decided to attempt to unravel the mystery myself. I was also getting separated from my husband and was filled with all sorts of fear, both rational and irrational in nature. I think the circumstances of this play were created from my worst nightmares of old age as a woman.

 

 

The two actual women seemed cartoonish, extreme; funny in a sense but also tragic and frightening, which compelled me. I saw some video of them and it took off from there. The characters that ended up becoming Renee and Gerta are very, very different from Helen and Olga. But the seeds are similar. Also, I grew up in Los Angeles, where both the real women and these characters live, and it’s a town that breeds desperation. You see it everyday, everywhere. In kids as young as five and adults in their eighties.

 

 

I never set out to politicize or lay messages underneath anything. But I can see exactly why you might label it a feminist cautionary tale!

 

 

Olga Rutterschmidt is Hungarian. But Gerta is an American pretending to be Austrian.

 

 

I did some research, especially when trying to understand insurance fraud and how one would get away with it. But for the most part, I made up quite a bit. Strangely enough, as I pieced the story together, I discovered I had guessed correctly about things that actually happened. That’s when you know you’re on the right track.

 

 

I have two dear friends with real monsters as mothers. How these women abused their daughters – in fact, they still do when given a chance – blows my mind.   The relationship between Shauna and Renee was inspired by my friends’ stories, their feelings, their pain.

 

 

I didn’t find it particularly challenging to write women older than myself. Mostly because they weren’t old fashioned or grandmotherly. They lived through the sixties and the women’s movement. They had sex before they were married. They swear. They work. They’re around the same age as my mother and her contemporaries who I know well. *I should mention that my mother is NOTHING like either of these two women. She’s a terrific parent, a dear friend and I love her to pieces!

 

 

Writing this play was like flushing an emotional toilet. Or playing with dolls. Nothing deeper than that.

 

 

Feedback…well everyone seems to be affected by it -- appalled, amused, touched, broken hearted, sickened – quite a gamut, which feels good. I like to help people feel things. Even if it’s uncomfortable. There’s so much apathy these days. So many people are shut down. To me, that is death.

 

 

An acclaimed playwright I know once said in an interview that if his characters stay in one room, it’s a play. But if they move outside, it’s a film. Interesting but not true in this case. I also remember when I saw the play “Doubt”, I noted that the set designer used suggestive pieces of scenery to denote multiple spaces. I loved that. In my writers group, which is full of incredibly gifted writers and actors who read their work, someone said in a critique that it seemed like a film. I had only written a few scenes and for some reason that comment stopped me cold. I set the piece down for two years and went back to screenwriting. So my answer is it’s a play because it’s dialogue based. It could easily be a film if I wrote it more visually.

 

 

It was really fun to create these women, but not necessarily because they did bad things. Once I found their voices the characters took on lives of their own.

 

 

Sad to say, I culled from many of my own personal experiences. It felt cleansing to share them, albeit sideways, with people. I saw a staged reading of the play recently and it made my heart sing watching the audience react to terrible things that have been said to me, or done to me, by others.

 

 

My influences? Do you mean writers that turn me on and why? I guess David Mamet and Harold Pinter because they pare down to essentials but still resonate, which is something I try to do. I love Shakespeare, Chekhov and Moliere because their plays can be interpreted so many ways and are so relatable globally. I honestly don’t really care who writes a play, I just want to feel something. I once saw a movie called “Funny Games” written and directed by Michael Haneke. It made me sick and it scared me to death. But I appreciated it because it jarred me to the core.