Phitting In Sanford Phippen recalls the angst of adolescence in a new play

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The signature stories of author Sanford Phippen are based on his upbringing in the Down East town of Hancock. His newest work, however, is a play set in upstate New York where, in his early 20s, Phippen took his first job teaching high-school English. Eventually, he returned to Maine to teach but, like a first love, that initial job lingered in his thoughts.

Last year, Phippen was asked to write a piece for the Maine High School Drama Festival. The result was “Standing Just Outside the Door,” a 40-minute script that premiered in Skowhegan and had a weekend run in Orono. It was published recently by Blackberry Press in Nobleboro with two other dramatic works by Phippen – a dramatization of his well-known collection of short stories, “The Police Know Everything,” and “The Straight and Crazy Doped-up World,” an adaptation of student journals from the 1970s, when Phippen was teaching in Syracuse, N.Y.

When I spoke with Phippen earlier this month, he was finishing exams with his students at Orono High School. Teens wandered casually into the classroom throughout the interview, often garnering academic praise from or exchanging friendly jibes with their teacher. Although he clearly enjoys a genial rapport with his pupils, Phippen was relieved that another school year had ended, allowing him to return to writing full time for the summer.

We spoke primarily about the themes of “Standing Just Outside the Door,” which takes place in 1966 and 2002, and is based on the emotional fallout when one boy in the story writes romantic letters to the school jock, who is also a boy. At the heart of the drama is the shifting sensibility about homosexuality in the mid-20th century.

While the character of the English teacher is overtly based on Phippen, in some way all of the characters are aspects of his personality. Since a Maine Times article outed him as gay last year, Phippen has faced ridicule from others and anxiety within himself. By his own admission, he struggles to define his personality.

This month, Phippen turns 61. He has been an educator for 40 years and is a finalist for the 2004 Maine Teacher of the Year Award. After one more year, he plans to retire. If the time I spent with him is any indication of how beloved “Phip” is to his students, then he will be greatly missed as a teacher. His hope, of course, is to establish an even greater presence as a writer.

We began with “Standing Just Outside the Door” and the homosexual student who inspired it.

Alicia Anstead: Why did you write this play?

Sandford Phippen: It’s something that haunted me from the time I was in my second year of teaching. I never got over that kid’s face. No one talked about homosexuality in those days or about any sexuality. I was in a conservative, rich suburb of Utica [New York] and nobody at the College of Education had ever told us how to handle a situation like this.

Anstead: So you wrote it to –

Phippen: – get it off my chest. Things have changed though, and I wanted to show what’s happened. In 1966, it was like that but it’s not like that now. Now, kids ask you right out and tell you. It’s very different. So I wanted to update it.

Anstead: Why do you think your students confided in you?

Phippen: I was their English teacher. I guess they trusted me. I was one of the youngest teachers there and was fresh out of college. I guess I was like I’ve always been: very familiar with the kids. They probably felt comfortable because we were almost the same age. They were 17. I was 23. The other teachers were much older and very aloof. I was not aloof.

Anstead: You talk about the main character’s creativity, that he should probably become a writer. Your allegiance in your work is always to the writer. Where does the writer fit on your importance scale for artists?

Phippen: I just told a class the other day about that. They asked me about important jobs. I told them having babies is No. 1. Two would be teaching the babies. And I think you could make the case that No. 3 is writing. I put it that high because everything has to be written down, at least in the Western world. We write to preserve our stories, our diaries, our background.

Anstead: You have, in fact, written to preserve a certain background.

Phippen: And a certain culture too.

Anstead: Your stories in “The Police Know Everything,” your novel “Kitchen Boy,” this play – all are based squarely on your life. Why write them as fiction?

Phippen: That’s what I’ve always wondered. Why write fiction? It’s silly to make things up.

Anstead: Then why do you write fiction instead of nonfiction?

Phippen: You mean why do I change the names?

Anstead: Yes.

Phippen: Because I want some license to change things around. Also, I don’t have time to look up dates and exact things to make it truthful and accurate. I’ve done three history books and that’s hell. You have to get things exact.

Anstead: In the best of all possible worlds, Mr. Playwright-Short-Story-Writer-Novelist, what type of writing do you want to do?

Phippen: I guess, Alicia, I want to try it all. I think a writer should try to write everything. I think it’s silly when some writers have to be in a certain place, and can only write their poems before noon. I hate that stuff and the whole business of the artist colony. I’ve never been able to have that anyway. I live in the real world.

Anstead: Would you want the artist colony?

Phippen: I think I wanted it once and then I went to Bread Loaf [the prestigious writer’s conference at Middlebury College in Vermont]. No, I don’t want that now. I think it’s good to live in the real world and deal with real people. Writing is like plumbing on that level. You’re doing a job. But at the same time, of course, I want to have some time in my life to be able to see what I can do with my methods, my fictionalized memoirs.

Anstead: Where do you see yourself fitting into the Maine tradition of writing?

Phippen: Where DO I fit in? I think that’s part of my problem. Where does Phippen fit? People in New York say that to me. They like my writing but they don’t know how to market me. I don’t write genre writing, and I don’t fit into all those categories they have laid out for marketing. I hope soon that will change.

Anstead: Do you feel you’ve been successful as a writer?

Phippen: On some levels, yes. I’ve managed to put down things I have really felt strongly about and get them published.

Anstead: And on what level haven’t you been a success?

Phippen: The money level. I’m a failure that way. I can’t live on it. That’s why I’m still teaching.

Anstead: What’s important about the themes in your new play?

Phippen: The theme of homosexuality is part of that play. But the play is also about education, the teacher-student relationship. But at that time, I was 23 years old and I was trying to figure out myself. I was wondering what was the matter with me. I had great girlfriends. I had such confusion. I didn’t know how gay I am or how straight I am. How do you know? Who knows what they are? We were brought up to be straight and have girlfriends. I had 17 of them, for god’s sake. And I’m still friends with them.

Anstead: But the Maine Times outed you.

Phippen: And I didn’t want them to. I’m a teacher. And as a writer, I don’t want to be dismissed. If you call someone gay as a teacher, you can get fired. Parents don’t want gays in the classroom even in liberal Orono.

Anstead: Although things are changing. Did you see the Tony Awards?

Phippen: I loved the Tony Awards. The whole audience seemed gay. But that’s New York. That’s a specialized area.

Anstead: But the Maine Times article didn’t destroy you.

Phippen: No, everyone rallied around me.

Anstead: Do you feel like you’re out now?

Phippen: Some people do.

Anstead: Do you?

Phippen: No, I don’t know how I see myself. I still have that problem. I don’t want that label. I want the label of man, person, human being, Maine guy, teacher. Those are good labels. Homosexual is still not a good label.

Anstead: In your mind or in society?

Phippen: Probably both. But definitely in my mind. It’s been a source of misery and frustration.

Anstead: One label that has been put on your work is “local color” or “regional.” And some argue that those labels have also kept the work local and regional.

Phippen: I know that and I agree with it. But it seems to me that some of our greatest literature is extremely regional. My major hero is Thomas Wolfe. I am copying him really. He wrote about everything in his life. He just changed the names. Even New York City is regional. I think people still don’t understand me. I can’t somehow cross over.

Anstead: What are your stories about?

Phippen: Real life. That’s the quick answer. Real life and me. They are about the deepest, darkest stuff, too, all the things that make us us. I love observing people and life. But the humor is very important. People who don’t have a sense of humor don’t get me.

Anstead: What do you hope will happen with these plays?

Phippen: I want people to put them on around Maine or around the country.

Anstead: What are you looking for?

Phippen: Enough money so I can really feel free to do what I want to do. A block of time. I’d love a block of time to see if I could sustain a narrative.