Dr. Jon Tuttle is a lover of drama—and not just hearing what his wife’s best friend’s sister told her mom yesterday. The about-to-be-retired professor (34 years!) of Modern and American Drama, Playwriting, and the literature of the Vietnam War at Francis Marion University (FMU) has penned a plethora of plays. It is a bibliography so impressive it has earned him the title of Playwright-in-Residence at Columbia’s Trustus Theatre.
His plays, published and produced across the nation, include The Hammerstone, Drift, Holy Ghost, The Palace of the Moorish Kings, and Boy About Ten. The Sweet Abyss, first written over a decade ago, is getting a fresh revival at Francis Marion University’s Hyman Fine Arts Center April 15-16.
The Sweet Abyss follows a single woman, Cassandra, whose closest relationship is with her beloved cat, Izzy. Unfortunately, as all things do, Izzy passes—in his mom’s arms—causing a rift in Cass’ life that she is not sure how to remedy. Through devastation and humor alike, the play presents “a rumination on morality and personal journey through sorrow and back, ultimately, to a newly negotiated comfort.”
Premiering in 2009 at Trustus, the play is coming up on its 15th anniversary, and this 2024 version has Dawn Larsen, Francis Marion professor of drama, at the helm as director.
“Dawn likes to bring her own interpretation to a script, as all directors should, and not shackle herself to stage directions, and I appreciate that,” Tuttle shares. “I was very encouraged by the read-through, I must say, because at a crucial moment—the euthanizing of a cat—everybody was weeping. I took that as an indication that everyone had been through that experience and was reliving it, and that’s a very important component to the play.”
Cats are particularly important to the faculty, staff, and students at Francis Marion. The campus is, simply, rife with cats, and while some places may eschew this, the community here has embraced it. The campus has a handful of cat shelters and a shed-turned-bungalow, professors/staff who take cats in for neutering, and student workers who are paid to feed them. Naturally then, it is FMU students and faculty—namely Tuttle’s friends Keith Best and Doug Gray—who serve as cast in this cat-centered play.
“This is a closely-knit, very collegial faculty, and this production is just more evidence of that,” Tuttle says. “I’m very touched that my colleagues would lend their talents to my play—to my career—in this way, and send me off on such a good note.”
More intimately, though, is the original inspiration for the play, which was the loss of Tuttle’s own cat, also named Izzy, who passed in his arms after a battle with diabetes. Shortly after, his cat Gato would pass as well. The grief that these back-to-back losses caused were overwhelming and surprising. Though he had experienced loss before and knew these losses would be difficult, he did not anticipate how all-encompassing the loss of his cats would be.
The original cast of The Sweet Abyss, starring Elena Martínez-Vidal as Cassandra
“I think the reason these losses hit me so hard was that there were times in my life when certain relationships were temporary or transitory or problematic, but not those with my cats,” he reflects. “They knew so much about me and followed me around and seemed to feel it important that they be near me as often as they could. These are very deep friendships, I’m saying, and I relied on them as much as they relied on me to take care of them.”
Tuttle and Cass become aligned figures, who try to overcome their grief and paralysis, but much like Cass, soon into writing Tuttle learned that he “could not solve death.” As he revised the play in its early forms, he stopped trying to find answers, finding meaning instead in the stillness, the mere existence of living with grief.
“In the end the play had to be about something else—in this case the need to fill those empty spaces with the things that are right in front of us, to recognize the blessings around us and to appreciate what Thornton Wilder meant when he said, ‘there is only life,’” Tuttle emphasizes.
This perpetuating reality is evident even as the play has shifted through time, which Tuttle emphasizes has not changed the play’s topic—time cannot touch the feelings of such loss. He recalls the Trustus premiere, when friends and patrons alike came up to share stories of their lost pets, and this sense of community brought him a great sense of joy. When Muddy Ford Press published The Trustus Collection (2019), he realized The Sweet Abyss stood out as a of favorite in his oeuvre—it stands up to and through time, in part because of how intertwined it is with Tuttle’s own identity and life.
“For a long time I kind of felt embarrassed about writing a play about my dead damn cats but now I’m proud of it and glad that it reminds me of them and of that time in my life and that it will happen again, because I’ll never not have cats,” he shares. “I need that uncomplex companionship, and so I think does everyone else.”
This sitting in loss, the ways it is mundane and absurd, and being forced to look at it for what it is, even without easy answers—or any answers at all—is key to the play and its story. We have all been Cass, and will be again, where our losses permeate through our skin and into our everyday lives. And perhaps we should not try to run away from the pain as much as it aches, for the ache is a reminder of the life once threaded through our own.
“The last image in the play—a light narrowing and narrowing on what is in effect a reliquary—is my way of emphasizing the permanence of what is lost. How many times have we read things like ‘nothing ever really dies.’ That notion recurs everywhere. I believe that notion,” Tuttle stresses. “To this day those cats and other pets I’ve lost remain very much in my consciousness and help me navigate difficult times.”
More details for how to witness The Sweet Abyss are available at Francis Marion’s website. It will be performed at the Hyman Fine Arts Center on FMU’s campus (4822 E. Heyward Drive, Florence, SC) on April 15th and 16th. The performance is free and open to the public. Note that, while the poster has the dates 11-13, the correct dates are the 15-16.
This production is a nod to the legacy of Dr. Tuttle as he steps down from his role at a university where he has so often and for so long been a shining beacon for students.
Oh, and, yes, this production features a live cat.