Natalie Symons’ ‘The People Downstairs’ lives on

For bay area playwright Natalie Symons, here’s hoping the third time’s the charm.

A production of her comic drama The People Downstairs opens Friday and runs through Feb. 23 at Stageworks Theatre in Tampa.

The poignant story of a shy, nearly-blind agoraphobic named Mabel Lisowski, her alcoholic mortician father Miles, and Todd, the introverted mortician’s helper who befriends her, The People Downstairs was developed and workshopped in early 2020 at St. Petersburg’s American Stage.

Initially, it lasted all of two preview performances, March 11 and 12 of that year. “It shut down because of Covid,” Symons recalls, “and then when we came back to do the play, 19 months later, the set was still up. And it went up, and it did really well for them. It ran three weeks.”

Three awkward, Covid-fearing weeks. With socially-distanced seating, six feet between each audience member. “And they couldn’t extend it, and a lot of people were disappointed that they couldn’t see it because there wasn’t enough space,” Symons says.

Between then and now, Symons published her debut novel, the coming-of-age thriller Lies in Bone, to great acclaim (it won the 2021 Best Book Award from American Book Fest). Peripherally, The People Downstairs was produced by a theater company in Seattle. And freeFall Theatre mounted a St. Pete production of another Symons play, the comedy Nightsweat.

Still, Mabel Lisowski wouldn’t be silent. New York native Symons, who studied theater at Boston University, spent years performing onstage before putting pen to paper. She hadn’t acted since 2015.

“I wanted to take the chance of playing Mabel,” she says. “I wanted to play a role in something I’ve written, just for the experience of it. To see if it was either glorious or a disaster.”

Ah, but the karmic wheel had yet to finish its rotation.

At BU, Symons took theater classes alongside a woman named Karla Hartley. The same Karla Hartley who is now artistic director of Tampa’s Stageworks Theatre.

“We lost touch, and ran into each other when I moved here,” Symons explains. “She was directing a production of my first play Lark Eden. She walked in, and it was like ‘… Natalie?’ ‘… Karla?’ It was so weird.”

The two friends conspired to produce the 2025 revival of The People Downstairs. Along with Symons, the cast includes Don Walker as Miles, Gavin Hawk as Todd, and none other than Karla Hartley as Shelly Williams, the court-appointed buttinsky who threatens to make Mabel’s life miserable. Kristin Clippard is the director.

Next up for Symons: Additional productions of The People Downstairs outside the bay area, a screenplay, and another deep, dark mystery novel she’s got her teeth sunk into. “They take time, because I have to go back and write it backwards,” she says. “I should just write a romantic comedy. It seems like that would be easier.”

Find details and tickets at this link.