4 a.m. Friends began as one short play about three thirteen-year-old friends dealing with the perils and heartbreak of a dad at war, growing up too quick because of things we can’t control, and the truths, support and love we get from our friends. Those thirteen-year-olds became playlet one: White Bra with a Pink Bow.
 
I realized I liked these three friends, Becca, Tammy, and Kim, as my friends and I are woven throughout the quilt of each character. I wanted to live with them longer, consider them as they aged, and see where their lives might take them.
That desire became playlet five: Freak Out.

A director friend of mine, Sharon W. Houk, directed both White Bra with a Pink Bow and Freak Out at different times. We were chatting one day about how much we love these characters. When I told Sharon I was considering writing more of Becca, Tammy, and Kim, her enthusiasm for directing them again was infectious.

I knew I did not want to write a play that saw our friends only over a short period of time. I wanted to explore and I wanted audiences to live with our friends for decades. The idea of short connected playlets, taking Becca, Tammy, and Kim from their teens to their sixties, excited me. The questions of what pivotal moments these friends would endure and celebrate together took me
on deeper journeys into their desires, obstacles, and friendship,
as well as into my friends’ lives and my own.

I know that, in my writing art, I live in Becca. My friend Kim (above right) can be found dancing in Kim. And my cousin Wendy (above left) twirls through Tammy’s being. Wendy and Kim are my 4 a.m. Friends, Wendy literally since birth as she is one and a half weeks younger than I am, and Kim since we were toddlers watching as our moms, Joan and Shirley, bond their own best friendship over gin and tonics while supporting each other through
raising a passel of headstrong, sometimes unruly,
surely too-smart-for-their-own-good, daughters.

Many years and copious amounts of ice cream – shout outs to Peaches N Cream in Litchfield, CT and Ted & Wally’s in Omaha, NE – intertwined with speckles of truth molded into each playlets’ fictitious journeys, allow Becca, Tammy, and Kim
to grow with us, showing how the true meaning of friendship lasts
through sorrow and joys, through challenges and celebrations.
 
And the name 4 a.m. Friends? As I was considering the overall titles for the six playlets, I came across a quote attributed to Marlene Dietrich:
​It’s the friends you can call at 4 a.m. that matter.
 
I know for certain that Kim and Wendy, and other friends like Jo, Lauren,Amy, Christine, Rachel, Kara, Rikki, Vicki, Julie, Jackie, Jef, Michael, Paul, Jim,Randall David, Joe, Kevin, and so many more that I would need an entire page to write them,
are the ones that I can call at 4 a.m., or anytime,
to share laughter and celebrations, tears and support.
 
My hope is that every audience member can find some of themselves in thefabric of our 4 a.m. Friends, much like Kenya Leon, who played Kim in the UNO New Ways, New Works Festival said of her friends. On an evening where we were digging into the characters, I asked the actors if, at their ages of between 18 and 25, they felt connection to the 4 a.m. Friends. Kenya stated that she started calling her friends Becca and Tammy because so many of those characters’ qualities were exactly like her friends. She also said that only she could be like Kim since she was not only playing her, she was also very much like her :).
 
THAT is the true meaning and feeling behind 4 a.m. Friends!
​They are my friends and, I hope, your friends, as well.
– Charlene