In creating Relative Captivity, Margaret Thomas Kelso worked closely with director John Heckel, her colleague in the HSU Department of Theatre, Film and Dance. It wasn’t their first collaboration. It is almost exactly a decade since Heckel directed the first her plays to be seen in Humboldt County—The Sex in Question, produced at HSU in December 1997.

They worked together most recently in 2004 on Critical Care, two linked one act plays on the past and future of medical care. Before that, in 2000, Heckel directed her short play, “Outside,” for the “Women on Stage” festival at Plays in Progress in Eureka. The story that play told of two women meeting outside a prison is now part of Relative Captivity.

“John is very good working with new plays. Also with the visual elements of a play,” she said. “That’s not my strong point. He’s also very good working with actors.”

But after many discussions and several drafts of this full length play in response to those discussions, last spring she felt she needed to hear the voices speak. So Heckel organized a group of actors to do an informal reading, and that group then joined in the ongoing collaboration, and became the core of the present production.