Team Play

Imagine receiving comfort without a word, or solace from a stranger. When her father was dying, that was Michelle Gabow's experience.

"He was in Philadelphia, and I would take these seven hour train rides back home," says Gabow, a Jamaica Plain resident and playwright who teaches acting and script writing at Curry College. "I was very sad, and people [on the train] could sense it. One man held my hand, without [me] even talking to him. People would give me gifts for no reason. There was just something in me that had no walls during that time, and people sensed that."

Gabow turned her experience into Train Wreck (a memoir), currently staged by the Roxbury Repertory Theater through Sunday, Jan. 25. The show incorporates spoken word, poetry, short dialogue, and silent movement to convey the connections between six disparate strangers who meet at a train station, a nexus where lives intersect if only for a few hours. But sometimes, that's long enough.

"Sometimes there are people you don't know who come into your life in a special way," says Gabow.

To direct her show, Gabow turned to someone else special in her life: Michelle Baxter, her partner of 28 years. They first met when Baxter was a student in Gabow's theater class, and eventually love blossomed. As a bi-racial, lesbian couple, it's likely that the Michelles have encountered obstacles as life partners; but in work, they've managed to prove wrong that age-old adage about doing business with the one you love.

"Initially, I think there was a lot of butting heads," says Baxter, who has directed several of Gabow's shows over the years. "Trying to understand each other and gain clarity about each other's work. But over time it becomes a little bit easier. The end goal is always to make [the show] the best that I can be."

"We still have what I call 'lively discussions,'" she laughs. "But I think that's healthy."

Gabow says that she tries not to write her plays with the preconceived notion that her partner will direct, but their uncanny understanding of each other's work often makes it awfully convenient to have a go-to collaborator. And considering how long the artistic process can take, it's helpful to know that your creative partner in the project will be around to watch it take shape.

"I became sick myself, and it took five years for me to complete the play," says Gabow. "I had an alternative doctor, and I would go away and write for a month as the characters came to me. It was a really long process, but I feel like it was supposed to happen. It was an extremely healing process."

The writing/directing team says that healing was a watchword when dealing with the play's cast, who are entrusted with conveying their characters' unique stories in a non-linear fashion. There is an interpretive, experimental element to watching the characters lives' connect, and Gabow says the play required appropriate methodology to stage.

"It's a play about the spirit," says Gabow. "We're not Buddhists, but we practice Buddhism in life, and so Michelle [Baxter] and I had very similar ideas about the spirit of the play, and the process to produce it. Michelle did meditations with the actors, a lot of exercises with them. It was very helpful, and they acknowledged that."

Baxter has kind words for her partner, too.

"Lucky for me, I had a great script to work with," says Baxter. She insists that despite her relationship with Gabow, her opinion isn't biased.

"I've always loved Michelle's work, and directing her plays have become a pleasure over the years," she says. In fact, Baxter is likely to direct Gabow's next, nearly finished play The Living End. Gabow wrote the show about her mother, setting the play on the fourth floor of a Hebrew rehab facility.

Creating such personal work is always daunting, but having a collaborator with your heart in mind, as well as your art, is surely comforting.

"I have a lot of faith in Michelle, and I'm not a person who easily has faith," says Gabow. "But this work makes our relationship more dynamic. We both love the spirit of theater. We love real art.

"It makes our relationship bigger," she adds, "in so many ways."

Train Wreck (a memoir), produced by Roxbury Repertory Theater, plays through Sunday, Jan. 25 at the Mainstage Theater at Roxbury Community College (1234 Columbus Ave., Boston). For showtimes and tickets, visit www.rccmainstage.com.