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by Melissa Bailey | Sep 18, 2006 2:38 pm

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Posted to: Arts

A crowd filled Lincoln Street’s Little Theater Saturday for a sneak peek at “Family Affair,” a tough play about a lost fathers and lost second chances, based on a childhood in the New Haven projects â€” set in L.A.

“Family Affair” follows a single mom through teen pregnancy, a series of disappearing men and an eventual spiral out of control, landing her in prison. Local playwright Dexter J. Singleton is in the first stages of adapting the play from a book by Alex Tyson, who was raised by a single mom in New Haven.

Saturday was just the third reading of the play. Singleton lined up his cast in front of a closed curtain, each with a music stand. Despite the lack of staging, the play â€” read by a cast of local actors, with Tamara Malawitz as the protagonist, Jackie â€” came alive.

Seeing the characters on stage the whole time â€” especially the absent fathers and Roger, Jackie’s best shot at an upstanding husband, a sweet and sympathetic man, who lands in prison after resorting to desperate measures when his youth criminal record prevents him from getting a job â€” added a haunting backdrop as the rest of the scenes of Jackie’s life moved on.

Crowd members gave feedback after the reading, all with deep empathy for the characters. “You can see they’re all just doing the best they can,” said one woman. Another suggested shorter monologues. A third wanted minor characters fleshed out. Singleton took notes.

Someone asked Tyson, the author of the book the play’s based on, what inspired the tale. “Growing up in the projects,” he said.

Tyson grew up in New Haven after moving at an early age from North Carolina. “From growing up in the projects, runing the streets and ending up going in the wrong direction, he found himself in the middle of being the leader of one of the biggest drug gangs in Connecticut,” reads his bio in program notes. “He hit rock bottom and lost everything â€” money, friends, women and material possessions before realizing if he did not leave the drug game alone and get himself together, the next lost would be his own life.”

So why’s the play set in L.A.? “My publishers are in L.A. and they thought I should set it there,” said Tyson.

The play, said Singleton, still needs much more tweaking to translate a book that spans two decades into an hour or two on stage. Once it’s finished, Singleton hopes to produce this (undercover) New Haven drama with the same strong cast of local actors on a local stage. Stay tuned.

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