Tina Esper’s comedy ‘Tight’ debuts this week at The Studio

There are, to Tina Esper’s way of thinking, precious few women playwrights over a certain age. And with that whole “write what you know” thing bouncing around in her fertile brain, the former freelance copy writer began turning out plays about interesting, complicated older women with interesting and complicated stories.

Esper, who lives in Montclair, New Jersey, is in St. Petersburg this week, working with director Kristin Clippard and a cast of bay area actors on a staged reading of her play Tight.

“It’s a comedy about a 78-year-old widow who falls hard for her very handsome, much younger handyman,” Esper explains. “And then it’s a story about the lengths she will go to, to get his attention. She wants to get a facelift, because she’s convinced that’s what she needs to get this man to love her.

“And of course, there’s the widow’s daughter, who is absolutely appalled by her mother’s choices. It’s about that generational warfare that happens between mothers and daughters.”

What’s especially significant about Tight – the staged reading takes place Thursday at The Studio@620 – is that it’s Esper’s first comedy.

Her other plays, including the acclaimed Neighbor Jane, Soft Star and State of Main (collectively known as The Jane Trilogy) are dramas, all about a 73-year-old woman looking both backward and forward.

Neighbor Jane was the co-recipient of the 2023 National Partners of the American Theatre’s Julie Jensen Playwriting Award.

“I write dramas that have many funny moments, and absurd moments,” says Esper. “And I really enjoy doing that.

“But I decided to write a comedy because … my mother had just died. I was halfway through grad school. My 99-year-old mother had just died. And so I had to travel back to New Jersey from Boston.

“And I knew that when I got back from my week off at school, I would have to start a play. And I thought, ‘I have to write a comedy. I cannot write a tragedy right now.’ I had to do it, to kind of get through it. I wouldn’t have been able to write something sad. I needed to write something funny. I think it just made me think happy thoughts, at a time when it was hard to think happy thoughts.”

A brief pause while working on “Tight” at The Studio@620: Director Kristin Clippard, left, Studio artistic director Erica Sutherlin, actors Robert Richards Jr., Jonelle Myer, James Putnam and Vickie Daignault, playwright Tina Esper.

Happy thoughts, in fact, were not exactly plentiful while she was writing advertising, marketing and corporate materials for high-level clients. She enjoyed the career, such as it was, but had been “dabbling” (her word) in playwriting since college. “I was married with young children, so it was not the traditional, early, straight out of school scenario,” Esper says.

“When my youngest graduated from college, I decided ‘Now is the time.’”

In 2010, she left her job and was accepted into Boston University, where she earned a Masters in Playwriting. If she couldn’t make a go of it as a professional, she reasoned, at least she’d be able to teach (which, as a matter of fact, she has done).

She is a member of Honor Roll!, an advocacy and action group of women playwrights over 40 (from the mission statement: “We are the generation excluded at the outset of our careers because of sexism, now overlooked because of ageism”).

Tina Esper takes that statement very seriously. “The fact is that I have access to a lot of older women, and that I’m willing to sit and talk to them, and hear what they have to say. And it has become an enormous mission, because stories of older women are very few and far apart in the American theater. And I’m really shocked at how much space, energy and time is given to stories about 20-year-olds.

“Hey, that’s fine. I have many 20-year-olds I love in my life. But why is the emphasis so much on the stories of youth? And why are the stories that women have worked hard to tell not being given any time and space? It’s much harder, one, for women playwrights over 50 to be given any kind of attention from American theater.

“And two, just telling stories of women in their 60s and 70s – there are so many wonderful actresses that get to a point, they’re just not getting any auditions. That’s a travesty. They should continue to work for as long as they want to work.

“That infuriates me. I can’t tell you how much. And the way I’m getting even is by writing parts for those women.”

With Tight, it’s a win-win. With laughs attached. Will love prevail?

“A fool in love can happen at any age,” Esper points out. “That’s part of the humor, that we can fall in love at any age; we can also act dumb at any age. Like a schoolgirl, at any age.

“I’m sure you’ve heard of people falling in love in nursing homes. It’s natural for people to want to connect to somebody else. So this is an example.”

The staged reading of Tight takes place at 7 p.m. Thursday. The audience is invited to stay for a post-reading feedback session. Find details and tickets at this link.