Two A.M. conversations: ‘Greetings’ playwright Zack Peercy on love, laughter and saying ‘I’m sorry’
Zack Peercy. Image credit: Mustard Magazine.
There’s no doubt that Zack Peercy’s proclivity for honesty was born from the place he calls home. That, and his self-deprecating sense of humor.
“I’m very annoying at the end of the day,” says the 30-year-old award-winning playwright. There’s no laugh to punctuate the end of the sentence, giving way to a natural levity; just an awkward, lingering silence that simultaneously disarms and instigates.
With his deadpan delivery, Peercy navigates his world with a mirror he holds up both to himself and those around him. It’s a humble but steadfast attitude one can attribute to growing up as a theater kid in a small, working-class town.
Peercy moved to Chicago in 2017 after graduating with a BFA in creative writing from the University of Maine Farmington. Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Peercy finds himself writing about the people who shaped that worldview back home, as well as past versions of himself he maybe wishes he’d forgotten.
“You know, sitting up at two in the morning and going through conversations you had seven years ago where you’re like, ‘I should have said this.’ Maybe not everyone thinks that way,” Peercy jokes. “Don’t diagnose me.’”
There’s that humor again—letting the listener in just enough while still keeping them at arm’s length. But his plays? Those divulge Peercy’s inner-workings on a deeper level. The stage is the one place where the playwright can let his thoughts run free.
Using himself “as an instrument”—that’s how Peercy describes acting—“hurt.” And while he performed in plays all through high school and college, “it made me feel bad, so I don't do it anymore,” he says.
Peercy mopping the stage as part of his ensemble duties at The Factory Theater. Image Credit: Liz Falstreau.
Now, Peercy works mostly behind the scenes. A former resident playwright at Three Brothers Theatre, he’s a current ensemble member and soon-to-be literary manager for The Factory Theater.
“On the storefront level, particularly for The Factory, no one gets paid,” Peercy explains. Instead, everyone involved as an ensemble member takes turns working the box office, cleaning toilets and mopping the stage. Even with his accolades—2022 SPARK Resident at the Filament Theatre, 2024 O'Neill Semi-Finalist and 2021 finalist, Bay Area Playwrights Festival Semi-Finalist and Blue Ink Semi-Finalist—Peercy isn’t above cleaning The Factory floors. “We’re all just doing this because we believe that it should be done,” he says.
Since The Factory only presents three full-length productions a year, the theater had extra space in its show calendar to fill for its “Overtime” series. Peercy pitched his short one-hour play, Greetings, which he started writing in college, and was given the green light to start rehearsals in January.
An unexpected medical event, however, made the already hectic rehearsal process all the more harrowing.
“It’s been a fucking chaotic, terrible last couple of months,” he says.
At the end of December, Peercy should have been celebrating the double-opening of his play “Hard-boiled Eggnog: A Christmas Noir,” in Kansas and Oregon. Instead, the busy playwright was in-between weekend readings of two different plays when his girlfriend, actor Liz Falstreau, went in for a routine medical procedure.
Theresa Liebhart and Liz Falstreau during rehearsals for ‘Greetings.’ Image credit Zack Peercy.
Due to unknown complications, that procedure turned into an emergency four-day hospital stay. Falstreau was stabilized, but she’d need to spend all of January recovering. Not only did Falstreau recover, she did so while rehearsing for her co-starring role in Greetings, alongside actor Theresa Liebhart.
“I’m in awe, I’m in reverence,” Peercy says of his girlfriend. “I will never forget her using a walker in the hospital to get up, saying, ‘Even if I have to use this walker, I'm going to star in that show.’”
Directed by Taylor Pasche, Greetings tells the story of Amy (Falstreau) and Caroline (Liebhart), two queer women from Northern Pennsylvania, whose relationship ebbs and flows over the course of 12 years.
Previously featured at the 2022 Elgin Fringe Festival, the 40th William Inge Theater Festival and 2024’s Fat Tuesday reading series by The Fat Theatre Project, The Factory’s production will be Greetings’ first full staging.
“The voices in my head were always these two women who had a relationship and had a falling out and are navigating this space of, ‘What are we? Are we friends? Are we more than that? Can love only be romantic love?’”
And even though Greetings focuses on two people very seemingly different from Peercy, the playwright says both characters are, in some way, versions of himself—and those late night, early morning dialogues that we all have with our own conscience.
“Loved ones, friends, lost friends, past connections—it’s all just me trying to navigate that space of how I feel about friendship and how I feel about love and how I wish I could have handled certain conversations,” Peercy says. “For me, those conversations always boil down to, I should have said ‘I'm sorry,’ or, I should have said, ‘I love you.’”
That emotion—which ends up written down on pages, discarded and then re-written—is something Peercy has always had bubbling up within. After college, the playwright moved to Chicago to pursue improv and comedy, when he was accepted into the acclaimed Kenyon Review Playwrights Conference in Ohio.
“I really liked to just make a spectacle of myself,” Peercy says. Image credit: Mustard Magazine.
“Something I enjoyed doing for a while was going to open mics and bombing on purpose,” he says.
“I really liked to just make a spectacle of myself. That was a way I could use my nervous energy and project it outward … but it did not lead to a lot of bookings.”
After attending a class at The Neo-Futurists, Peercy pivoted from comedy back to his theatrical beginnings. “I think I’m more of a fan of performance-art type stuff,” he says; a realization he discovered at the Chicago-based experimental performing arts collective.
Now, Peercy says he’s thankful to be in a place where he has connections. “To get some work out and have people believe in the stuff that I’m doing,” he says.
Peercy was born with glaucoma, a chronic eye disease that damages the optic nerve and causes blindness. While he works as a freelance copywriter, Peercy has to be careful about how much work he can take. “A lot of stuff is tied up in the fact that I am disabled,” he says. “My vision is really bad and I’m on social security.” Too much income, he explains, and he’ll lose his healthcare benefits.
“I can afford to survive, not thrive,” he says. “It’s a double whammy of having some sort of security and income, and not being able to claw [myself] out of my current position.”
But Peercy has—and is—clawing. “What Chicago has meant to me more than anything is access,” he says. “Pennsylvania is not really known for its easiness to get around—and I can't drive because of my eyes. Just having access to public transit and stuff within walking distance has been life-changing and life affirming in many ways.”
In between writing plays, Peercy devotes his time to helping others hone their craft; like when he led a six-person virtual residency for Three Brothers last year. Or how his focus as The Factory’s incoming literary manager is to help make submitting plays to The Factory easier for playwrights who aren’t part of the theater’s ensemble.
“A lot of working class storefronts have had to fold because rents are skyrocketing and prices are going up,” Peercy says.
“It’s becoming harder and harder to attend things and connect with organizations because a lot of people who are still around in the scene can afford to—through either family money or outside means. I've only got where I’ve gotten to because of the help and support of others, given freely. The only way to improve all of our facilities is by continuing to give back.”
Peercy is a lauded Chicago playwright from Pennsylvania. His play, ‘Greetings,’ opens January 23. Image credit: Mustard Magazine.
While Peercy often draws inspiration from the Keystone State, the playwright, like so many of us, has a complex relationship with his roots. “It’s tough to go home,” he admits, the swing state now red in an uncertain post-election world. Still, the Chicago transplant embodies a salt-of-the-earth quality that stands out here in the Midwest and in his work.
“What I love about the east coast and about Pennsylvania is how funny people are when things are hard,” Peercy says. “I didn't have an easy childhood. I don't know a lot of people who did. But the funniest people I know are all from Pennsylvania. That’s what makes it bearable—the friends and family members I have that can joke about the pain of it. Our ability to laugh in the darkness.”
Overtime at The Factory presents: Greetings, January 23 through February 1 at The Factory Theater, 1623 W Howard Street. Tickets $15 at thefactorytheater.com.
