A group of friends must deal with the aftermath of a suicide in Jacob Marx Rice’s play Coping. After a hit run at this year’s New York International Fringe Festival, it makes its way to the Soho Playhouse as part of the FringeNYC Encore series. Mr. Rice has previously explored mental illness and depression in Chemistry, which won the 2014 FringeNYC Excellence in Playwriting Award. StageBuddy interviewed the young playwright about his work, challenging misconceptions and empowering people with mental illness to tell their stories.

What was the writing process like for Coping? Did you do a lot of research or meet with people dealing with mental illness and/or suicide?

The process was hard. I started writing this play after a good friend of mine took his own life, so there was no separation or safety net. None of the characters are based on anyone, but the emotions and arguments and sense of the absurdity of death very much reflect my experience. Conveying those feelings honestly while constructing something coherently dramatic was like juggling knives with no handles. Writing the play was cathartic, my own way of coping, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.

Because I have known many people with mental illness and written about the subject before, I did less new research while writing. I wanted all the medical and psychiatric stuff to be as accurate as possible but I wasn’t trying to create characters who perfectly embody OCD or depression. It was more about using the psychology as a backdrop and creating fully formed people who are struggling with these massive issues on top of everything else.

The play is both humorous and dark while maintaining the dignity of the characters. Was it tough to find a balance between the difficulty of the subject matter and the humor?

In a weird way, I think death is inherently humorous. There’s something absurd in the idea that everything we care about so much could suddenly end and none of it would really matter. However, it was important to me that the play never devolve into farce. We laugh with and at these people, but death itself must remain serious or the play doesn’t work. The jokes in the piece are about human flaws and foibles that come out in horrible situations, not about mocking those who struggle with mental illness. Coping is funny, suicide isn’t.

What obstacles did you face, if any, while writing about depression and suicide?

The biggest obstacle is that everybody has a different viewpoint. I wanted this play to be challenging but not preachy, to ask a lot of questions without necessarily answering them. That meant putting aside my own preconceptions, and figuring out each of the five characters’ distinct perspectives. None of the characters are “right” in my opinion, but hopefully all of them are truthful. And by watching them interact, the audience can make its own decisions.

How closely did you work with director Anna Strasser? Was Coping a collaborative effort?

I worked very closely with Anna and with our producer Audra [Arnaudon], who are both incredibly smart and dedicated artists. We worked on Chemistry together at the 2014 Fringe Festival and I wrote this play to do with them. The first time I sent out a draft of Coping I had this gnawing fear that they would read it and say they wanted nothing to do with it. Fortunately, they didn’t. Once we had a draft, we really went to work; they gave copious feedback and put together a workshop and two readings to get the script ready. For the production, the three of us worked together on everything, from casting to rehearsals to managing the crazy logistics of Fringe. I believe good collaborators are the most important factor for success in theatre generally and Fringe specifically, and I’m very lucky to be able to work with the best.

Chemistry also dealt with mental illness and met with a lot of success. Do you plan on writing more about the topic?

I have always been drawn to mental illness in my work, but Chemistry was the first time I confronted it head on. Then I wrote Coping because I felt there was still a lot more I needed to talk about. I think I have one more play about this subject matter in me before I’ll be ready to move on for a while. The plays will form a trilogy of sorts, not narratively but thematically. I don’t know that much about the third play except that it will be about the long-term psychological effects of suicide and it will probably start with a "C".

There is still a lot of stigma surrounding mental illness and suicide. What kind of influence would you like Coping to have on audiences and their own possible misconceptions?

I think people are afraid of talking about these issues because they are hard, but that’s also exactly why we have to talk about them. And things are starting to change. Last year, with the death of Robin Williams, there was so much discussion. It felt like a steam valve releasing all this pressure. We still have a long way to go but it was progress, and the only way to make more progress is to keep talking about it. We have to empower people who struggle with mental illness to tell their stories and challenge misconceptions. I don’t write plays with clear messages, but if there is any message that people take away from Coping, I hope it is that ignoring the problem won’t make it go away. We have to participate in the conversation. We have to remain open. We have to keep moving forward.