Staged Reading of Michael C. O’Day’s ‘Before Vinson’ at LTV

LTV Studios and Playwrights’ Theatre of East Hampton will host “Before Vinson” on Saturday, September 16, at 7:30 p.m. Written by Michael O’Day and produced by Josh Gladstone, “Before Vinson” is a companion piece to Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.” The play was featured this past June at the Valdez Theatre Conference in Valdez, Alaska.

“Before Vinson” is set in early spring 1949, when a young attorney named Bernard is about to argue his first case before the U.S. Supreme Court. As he makes his final preparations for oral argument, however, he learns that the outcome of the case will depend not upon his legal acumen, but on backyard tennis games, men’s fashion, breakfast pastries — and a certain traveling salesman who lived next door when Bernard was growing up.

“One of the formative theater experiences of my youth — well, theater-adjacent at any rate — was watching the network broadcast of the Dustin Hoffman production of ‘Death of a Salesman,’ back when network television still did things like that,” explained O’Day. “I was the sort of nerdy teenager who would spend days anticipating such a broadcast, and it was my introduction to the play — and I still remember the nerdy neighbor kid character of Bernard, the character closest to myself at the time, and my mounting sense of dread and horror as Bernard was not only mocked and tormented throughout the piece, but mocked and tormented by the defining character in American dramatic literature.

“Which is not to say that I don’t like ‘Death of a Salesman,’ because I do, or that it's not a masterpiece, because it is. But the great plays conjure up vast and enormous worlds, of which we only ever see the tiniest corner,” continued O’Day. “And I’ve wondered about Bernard’s corner of the world ever since that fateful telecast. How did he become the man we see at the end of Act Two, on his way to argue before the Supreme Court? What temptations did he experience along the way? Did he overcome them? And what does his story have to tell us, here and now? Classic plays are always a conversation between past and present, between the playwright in his time and us, reading or watching, in ours. In putting together ‘Before Vinson,’ my take on Bernard’s Supreme Court case and a — completely unasked for — riff on ‘Salesman,’ I tried strictly adhering to the late ’40s setting of Miller’s original play, but the story I came up with — about the temptations of wealth and power, and about who’s actually running this nation of ours, seems to become more relevant and contemporary every time I open the newspaper.

“I am thrilled to be bringing this piece for further development here with my friends from Dead Playwrights Society — which kept a number of us sane throughout the long pandemic with classics readings that kept the conversation between past and present alive — and Josh Gladstone, my college classmate, who was there when I first started exploring the corners of theater myself.”

Michael C. O’Day is a theater artist based in New York City. His work last appeared on the East End at the John Drew Theater, where his play “The Tragedy of King John Falstaff” was presented in a developmental workshop. The Playwrights’ Theatre of East Hampton series, founded in 1992 by Mitzi and Perry Pazer, was recently revived with their blessings by LTV producer Josh Gladstone.

General admission tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door at ltveh.org. LTV Studios is at 75 Industrial Road, Wainscott.