William Mastrosimone

William Mastrosimone
By TED OTTEN
Special to The Times

In William Mastrosimone's play ''The Woolgatherer,'' Cliff tells
Rose about the bridge sign that says ''Trenton Makes the World
Takes.'' The action of Mastrosimone's ''The Undoing'' is set in a
poultry shop in Trenton's Chambersburg section, a neighborhood
where the playwright lived when his works, such as ''Extremities,''
became known worldwide in productions as far away as Tokyo and
Copenhagen. Mastrosimone told the world about Trenton _ and now
Passage Theatre is about to bring Mastrosimone's latest play.
Described by Passage's producing artistic director June Ballinger
as ''a local treasure we're so proud to share with the world,''
Mastrosimone now lives in Seattle with his wife and two daughters.
There,he was playwright-in-residence at Seattle Repertory Company
but his move to the West Coast was ''for purely practical reasons.''
His heart remains close to his hometown. ''Don't ask me what I
remember most about Trenton,'' Mastrosimone said in a telephone
interview during ''Blinding Light'' rehearsals, ''because you'd
run out of tape and I don't have that much time. I have and keep
so many accumulated images of Trenton _ not only of my family but
of the place itself. ''After 'Extremities,' after my work started
gaining major recognition, I chose to stay in my Chambersburg
apartment although many people urged me to live in New York,''
he added. ''I'd go flying off to see productions of my plays in
London, Germany or Norway, and come back to Trenton.I loved the
Burg , and I told people I stayed there because when I came home
I knew my typewriter would still be there. I hear Trenton voices
in my mind all the time.'' Most of all, Mastrosimone said he
''liked being around real people, especially after a little
taste of Hollywood people and a lot of New York egomaniacs. If I
wanted to write the way I really wanted to write, I had to be
careful about the diet of people that I chose.'' And what a diet
Trenton offered. ''Sure, I'd get ticked off by the rudeness of
taxi dispatchers, but so many other things made up for that. I
remember one hot day when I working at home and an old woman
with a broom chased a bunch of kids who were playing on the
sidewalk outside my window. 'Don't play by this window; the
poet is working!' she hissed at them. Now, I didn't know her
at all, and I don't know how or what she knew of my work,
but she was willing to go to bat for me and for my creative
process. People were always so supportive.'' The city also
afforded Mastrosimone a brush with celebrity _ someone else's
that is., ''When I was getting started, I had a job three days
a week as a pizza maker and that left me four days free to
write. It paid pretty well for such unskilled labor, 8 or 10
bucks an hour back in the '70s,'' he recalled. ''One night
very late, I was walking home, all covered with flour, when
I saw a crowd waiting outside a restaurant. Word had got
around that Frank Sinatra was coming _ and I saw Sinatra
get out of his big limo. No one said anything, but he acknowledged
our presence. ''When I told Daniel Aubrey, the producer of
Passage's first play, about getting the job to write a TV miniseries
about Frank Sinatra in 1992, I had that memory. It was eerie.''
Mastrosimone also remembers fondly the strong, yet quiet, sense of
community in his neighborhood. ''Next to Barbaro's Bakery there was
a green box with a slanting lid. It contained bags of bread for
people who couldn't afford to buy it,'' he said. ''When I lived in
the Burg , I'd see these little old ladies _ whom I thought of as
professional widows _ and others who would take out what they
needed for that day. I went there myself only once. Where are
you going to find that kind of charity without somebody making
a big deal about it, satisfying their own egos with their
generosity?''