The New Yorker is 100 years old.
Eve Potts is just 4 years younger.
Neither shows signs of slowing down.
Potts — who in nearly 70 years in Westport has impacted nearly every artistic and historical organization here — is about to debut “Talk of the Town.”
The project — a collaboration with fellow Westporter Andrew Bentley — has been more than 10 years in the making.
It will be worth it. The staged reading of their original musical, “Talk of the Town” (Westport Country Playhouse, June 8) tells the true tale of the 2 love stories that launched the legendary magazine.
Playwrights Eve Potts and Andrew Bentley.
Hundreds of books have been written about the New Yorker, Potts says. But very little have delved into that love aspect of the original story.
And certainly not in a musical.
The fact that Potts had never written a musical, in all her 96 years?
No problem!
Westport has a long history with the magazine. Local artists have illustrated dozens of covers.
In 2014 she curated a Westport Historical Society show, featuring some of that art. Each work was accompanied by a photo of the same location, now.
A “New Yorker” cover, and the same scene now.
Bentley had just moved back to town. A graphic designer and writer, he wrote her out of the blue. Do you want to do a book? he asked.
They collaborated on “The New Yorker in Westport.” A collection of those covers — with background material — it has raised over $100,000 for local charities.
The cover of Eve Potts and Andrew Bentley’s book shows a classic Compo Beach scene, from 1973.
Soon, they were ready for their next act: a show about the magazine’s founding, with an emphasis on the “love stories” behind it.
As the idea took shape, Potts and Bentley — who also had never written a musical — enlisted Jeffrey Stock. He created all the songs, which gave structure and spirit to the story.
Irving Berlin figures prominently in the launch of the New Yorker. So does Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant. Potts calls her “a beautiful, intelligent, powerful woman — a proto-feminist.”
A dancer and singer who had gone to business school, she famously kept her maiden name — a rarity at the time.
The fervent Roaring Twenties, when New York — with its jazz, speakeasies and unbridled optimism — was ready for a sophisticated magazine plays a major role in the new musical too.
Before and while writing a play about those early years, Potts read “every scrap” she could.
There was a lot. Founder Harold Ross typed most of his thoughts, then added hand-written comments. Potts pored through his archives, at the New York Public Library.
The Playhouse staged reading will be the first time — after a decade of work — that “Talk of the Town” is seen in public. (There have been a couple of table reads at Bentley’s home.)
Potts and Bentley have enjoyed working with the WCP team, to bring it to life. “They’re so supportive and helpful,” she says. “It’s been very educational to see what goes on behind the scenes.”
Potts — who is “more is excited than I thought I’d ever be” — gives big props to her co-writer.
“Andrew is on top of everything,” she says. “He’s incredible with details. He does a lot of the scut work.”
Potts and Bentley are unsure of the next steps. Can it become a musical staged by high schools? Will a producer stage it on Broadway?
But one thing is almost certain: 96-year-old Eve Potts is the oldest new playwright in America.
What better way to celebrate the 100th birthday of the New Yorker?
