At home, on stage – love letters inform performance in Belknap Mill play

LACONIA — Daddy Long Legs, a romantic musical told through a series of love letters between the play’s two main characters, is coming to the Belknap Mill this Friday. In a case of art imitating life, the production’s protagonists are played by New Hampshire married couple Joel and Laura Iwaskiewicz. Laura teaches music and theater at Derry’s Pinkerton Academy, while Joel teaches English and theater at Exeter High School.

The play is based on an early 20th Century novel by Jean Webster, where a young orphan named Jerusha Abbott shows a knack for writing. One of the orphanage’s benefactors notices her talent, and decides to anonymously put Jerusha through college, under the condition she writes him once a month. 

“She takes it 50 steps beyond what he expected, she turns it essentially into a diary of sorts,” explained Laura, who plays Jerusha Abbott. “She pours her life out in these letters, it's really exciting to play this role, and to play someone young and so energetic.”

The couple scored the role due to their connection with local theater producer Bryan Halperin, and their own courtship, which shares a few similarities with the play. 

“Laura and I got married in 2014,”  Joel said, “going on eight years which is really exciting. We’ve got our own history of love letters as well.”

“Joel’s first summer of grad school we were dating, he was going to be gone the entire summer. When he got to Vermont we discovered the (cell) service there was awful,” Laura said. “After a few days of losing phone call after phone call, he wrote his first letter to me.”

The letters became a nearly daily ritual, and became the couple’s primary means of communication. 

“The last piece of mail I opened that summer led to him arriving on my doorstep and proposing to me,” Laura said. 

In addition to their natural chemistry their relationship bring to the characters, it’s also made practice a lot easier.

“It's been tricky to navigate the challenges regarding public health,” Joel said of the recent acting climate, “but Laura and I live together. We rehearse regularly in our kitchen. At this point our kids can sing certain songs or quote back certain sections of the play.”

“It's been exciting to find a bit of the ‘new relationship’ excitement of 10 years ago when we were first starting to date and exchange those letters,” Laura said. “It’s been really exciting to relive some of that path through these characters as we step into these roles again.”

Showings of Daddy Long Legs are scheduled for Friday, Saturday and Sunday this week. A special dress rehearsal will show Thursday morning, where 70 of Laura’s students will make up a majority of the audience. 

“I was telling our director that I’m very excited, I’m very nervous,” Laura said, “putting myself on the line saying I can do what I teach. I feel very confident, which is why I invited them in the first place. Still, it’s nerve wracking.”

Tickets to Daddy Long Legs are available at the door of the Belknap Mill or at https://www.belknapmill.org/daddylonglegs