Interview: Rob Ackerman of BACKTALK at Abbey Theater Of Dublin

“Anyone with a vocation hears the voice of the inner man: he is called.” – Carl Jung

If psychologist Carl Jung wrote a romantic comedy, it might be similar to Rob Ackerman’s BACKTALK, which runs Oct. 2-12 at the Abbey Theater (5600 Post Road in Dublin).

In this Original Productions Theater offering, two worlds collide when driven real estate developer Rachel (played by Alyssa Ryan), meets laid back plumber Bob (Erik Bobbitt) in a bar.

In order to find their “happily ever after,” Rachel’s inner voice Herman (Jed Hudson) must win over Mindy (Leslie Robinson) the skeptical, still small voice that resides in Bob’s head. As the two become closer, Bob and Rachel must navigate a minefield of inner insecurities, doubts, and hesitations.

“We all have voices in our heads,” said Ackerman, who was a  Prop Master for the SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE Film Unit for over  25 years before deciding to focus on his writing career. “Even the people who say they don't have (that inner voice), have one. You have these little suggestions you get from somewhere that aren’t from you.

“In BACKTALK, we have a double love story between our inner life and our buttoned up life, and that plays out on stage.”

Ackerman, whose film STARGAZER was featured at the Cinema Columbus Film Festival in 2024, knows a thing or two about listening to that inner voice that whispers in his ears.

When his to-do list and his calendar showed Ackerman he didn’t have time to pen a play, the voice inside his head kept urging him forward.

“This play started to come to me at a really inconvenient time,” Ackerman said. “I started writing it while I was at work for SNL during the most impossible time to start writing. I was hiring people for this crew for a Saturday Night Live job. The phones were ringing and buzzing with texts.”

Part of the idea for BACKTALK sprang from HOW TO MAKE COFFEE WHEN YOU HAVEN’T HAD YOUR COFFEE, a 10-minute play Ackerman put together in 2016. In the short play, one of the main characters has a strange, little woman’s voice inside his head that helps him make sense of a world into which he has been thrown.

“While I was writing BACKTALK, someone said to me, Rachel should have a voice in her head,” said Ackerman who grew up in Bexley and attended Columbus Academy. “Instantly I thought, ‘That would probably work.’

“When I was on the SNL set, I realized she has a gay man living inside her head and (Herman) has ideas about how she should be living her life. Then I thought if there’s a man inside her head, there has to be a woman inside Bob’s head. Suddenly it became a fair fight and the whole play started to explode.”

As he was putting together the play, Ackerman remembered the words of playwright A.R. Gurney, the author of LOVE LETTERS and several other plays.

“Gurney was my mentor,” Ackerman said. “He said, ‘If the play surprises you and takes you to a place you didn’t think it should go, do not fight the play. Don’t stick with Plan A. Go with what’s happening with the people in the play.

“BACKTALK kept surprising me over and over again. As a writer, I’d go ‘Oh my God, how can this be happening?’ I had certain rules for what would happen with the voices, and the voices broke the rules. They took matters into their own hands.”

Ackerman’s job at SNL helped prepare him for handling the unexpected. His job title was “prop master” and his union card said “craftsman,” but Ackerman’s role on SNL Film Unit was “miracle worker.” Any time the show wanted to do a fake commercial, a movie trailer, or a mini film, Ackerman was the problem solver.

Ackerman said his first trial by fire was creating the special effects for a parody beer commercial for bogus beer Schmitt’s Gay. Ackerman produced ways to launch beer bottles from the ice and levitate well-oiled muscle men over a pool.

After that, Ackerman was the go-to guy for the show’s short films. You need to have a baby spit out vomit all over Heidi Gardner’s face, set up a rainstorm on a dry New York street, or even decapitate Pete Davidson? Ackerman’s your man.

“I had to solve the physical problems of whatever was being shot,” he said. “I was sort of an all-purpose decorators’ enabler and problem solver.”

For BACKTALK, OPT put to use Ackerman’s skills as a craftsman to build their set. Some of the action revolves around Bob’s pickup truck. OPT planned to have an actual pickup truck on stage but fire department officials told them it would be a fire hazard.

OPT tracked down a person selling the bed of his old Toyota truck and Ryan and Ackerman built the pickup truck bed out of a bedliner and two by fours.

While Ackerman didn’t do any writing for SNL or act in any skits, his time at the late night show helped him with the next phase of his career. It taught him to be persistent and solve problems quickly.

“There’s a lot of trial and error so you have to be patient as a craftsman and you have to be patient as a writer,” he said. “It’s not going to work the first few times, but it’s going to work.”

“Saying something is impossible is not a good answer,” Ackerman said. “It was always ‘solve it,’ ‘figure it out.’ It's just insane. At one point I told my boss, ‘You can't expect me to do the impossible every week.’ He answered, ‘Why not? You keep doing it every week.’”

The ability to think on the go and problem carried over into his writing. “I create the problem for the characters, then I figure out how to solve it,” he said.

Columbus is the perfect place to host the debut of BACKTALK. The show is set here in Columbus with much of the action taking place at the Bexley landmark Jeffrey Mansion.

Ryan, the executive director of OPT, is delighted to take on the challenge of this show.

 “BACKTALK is a unique treat. We have never produced a romantic comedy before so I was really excited about that,” Ryan said. “The fact that Rob grew up in Columbus and set the play here made taking this project on an easy choice.”

Ackerman said one of the advantages of working with a Columbus cast is they can set him straight if something doesn’t ring true in the script.

The setting of the play is the Columbus of Ackerman’s youth, not the current city. As the playwright returned to Columbus this fall, he realized the city now is much different than the one in which he spent his formative years.
“I feel like I'm a tourist in the town where I grew up,” he said. “There’s so much culture that didn't exist when I was growing up here. There is so much more diversity, so much more culture, and so much more of the stuff I like best.

“I don't know if I would have even gone to New York if I lived in the Columbus that exists now. If anyone needs a PR person for Columbus, I'm the man for it.”

For most of his professional life, Ackerman has lived in New York City, which is both a blessing and a curse. On the plus side, there’s an abundance of talented actors willing to help workshop plays.

BACKTALK attracted a number of talented actors – Francis Jue (who won a 2024 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for YELLOW FACE), Kathy Fitzerald (who played Madame Morrible in a Broadway production of WICKED), and Maddie Corman (an actress who played in the films SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL and BEGIN AGAIN) -- helped workshop BACKTALK. SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE alumnus and SHRINKING star Heidi Gardner had also planned to participate but had to decline because of her schedule.

“That’s the great part about being in New York,” Ackerman said. “I've had stars say, ‘Sure, I'll read your play’ and they fall in love with it. Then they can’t do it. If you want to have your heart broken, doing a play in New York is the place to be.”

Ackerman is looking forward to seeing if all wrong turns and off ramps have paid off when the show opens. In the meantime, he is trying to filter what his  inner voices tell him.

“Ralph Waldo Emerson said always do what you are afraid to do,” he said. “A lot of times our inner voices develop a sense of paranoia but occasionally they are filled with insight and awareness.

“If you don't take the risk to put yourself out there, then you're never going to be out there; you're going to be alone. (Those voices) can kick us into gear and save us.”

Photo courtesy of Rob Ackerman