Louise Brown: A Character Born In Vitro

HHG Theatre Co-Artistic Director Sean Devine talks about the ongoing creation process for his newest work Daisy.

I’ve always had trouble coming up with character names. I envy playwrights who can come up with the most interesting and ingenious names right off the cuff. I’m not one of them. It takes me about 15 attempts to come up with a name that doesn’t sound phony.

Even as a young man, if and when the situation presented itself where I could attempt to pass myself off as someone else, i.e. provide a false name to someone askng my identity, I felt like I couldn’t pull it off. “Max”, I’d invariably answer, then wait for them to peer into my eyes and say “You’re not Max. You’re an impostor!”

And so an interesting opportunity presented itself recently. In writing my new play Daisy, which is based on real people’s lives and achievements, I found myself writing a play with only male characters. This was troubling me. As it should! Especially considering the recent statistics on the employment of women in theatre (which is, face it, one of the more unfair industries when it comes to employment). Thanks to Lois Dawson for the stats.

So I considered adding a female character, an invented presence in this real-world, historical  situation. But that didn’t feel right for anyone:  not for the story, or for the play, or even for my female colleagues.

Then, as I was reading an article about non-traditional casting (imagining Richard III played by a woman) I thought “Why not just make one of the existing characters a woman?” Heck, the play takes place in the advertising world of the mid-1960s. It’ll even add a layer of possible conflict. Why would I avoid more conflict?

So I took the character I know the least about, a copywriter named Stan Lee (there’s very little written about him), and with a few keystrokes, made him a her. I love that it’s the character I know the least about, since it opens me up to do a total re-invention. Obviously, if and when this script gets produced / published, I’ll let the world know all about Stan.

And so there I was, faced with the dilemma of coming up with a new name for this character. Do I keep it close to the original name: Sara Lee (no!), Sandra Lee (boring), Samantha, Stephanie. It all felt too tacked on. Too fake. Everyone would know that both she and I were impostors!

Then, the name Louise Brown came to me. Perhaps because I was thinking about Lois Dawson, whose article spurred me on. But I liked the name Louise Brown. I liked the fact that her colleagues can call her ‘Lou’, in a chauvinistic pattern of not even allowing her to be fully female (more conflict).

So then I did as I always do when I come up with a new fictional character name: a Google search. Sure enough, there must be a real Louise Brown, and what interesting person is going to pop up first in the search engine?

Meet the real Louise Brown, who just happens to have been the first human to have been born after conception by in vitro fertilization. It just seems fitting. What a great way to birth a new character. Perfect. No longer an impostor.