THE lesson of the one-act play Suicide Gal, Won’t You Come Out Tonight, Come Out Tonight is for children to resolve issues with parents before they die.

   The grown daughter of the play confronts the ghost of her mother, whom she had a caustic relationship with.

   ”People always know about these relationships but they never do anything about it,” says Steve Gaissert, who’s directing the production of Suicide Gal that will be performed at the Theater/Dance Workshop in Trenton Nov. 7 and 8. “Families deal with mental health issues and keep them hidden. People need to talk about these things.”

   He sees Suicide Gal as an icebreaker to start the discussion, envisioning a production that brings the play’s theme off the stage and directly into people’s lives.

   ”I want to bring people into rehearsal, to immerse them in the production and not just have them show up to a performance,” he says. “We’re not relying on the average theatergoer. We’re relying on people who want to talk it out and see a good performance and also to be involved.”

   He’s been in contact with the counseling services Princeton House, NAMI Mercer and the Traumatic Loss Coalition. “I have such a strong feeling toward this,” says Mr. Gaissert, a 49-year-old Hamilton resident who works for the state. “The idea is to educate the public about mental health and talk about the issues we all have and get people to open the discussion. I want to have people use it as a tool for education, therapy and for anything else they can use.”

   When Mr. Gaissert was a student at Trenton State College (now The College of New Jersey), he learned about the idea that theater could be less a form of entertainment and more a way to motivate and educate an audience. He majored in political science and minored in theater, beginning in lighting and experimenting with acting, which he gave up when he realized he couldn’t lose himself in a character. “Actors have to be able to stop looking at themselves,” he says. “Unfortunately I’m always assessing — that’s my brain make-up.” He became a director.

   Mr. Gaissert met Marjorie Duryea, the director of the Theater/Dance Workshop who also plays the mother in Suicide Gals, around 1980 when they both worked on a community production of Damn Yankees. The pair stayed in touch, and when Ms. Duryea started the Theater/Dance Workshop around 1995, she invited her old friend to participate.

   ”I’m in awe as to how much talent she’s got hidden behind what you see,” Mr. Gaissert says of Ms. Duryea. “And it just comes out and comes out and comes out.”

   Jennifer Most, who plays the daughter, was once a student of Ms. Duryea. She went on to study acting and graduate from Mason Gross School of the Arts in New Brunswick. Before this production the pair, who began rehearsing in early September, had never acted together. “It’s hard work, but it’s fun hard work,” Mr. Gaissert says.

   Suicide Gal has been a “very collaborative effort,” he continues. “It has to be. I just have one point of view. We will talk about a line in relation to what just happened in the story and what happens next.”

   Working on Suicide Gal, Mr. Gaissert and Ms. Duryea have been in contact with the playwright, J. Boyer, an Arizona State creative writing professor, who’s helped them untangle the characters’ relationships. “It’s taken us more than a month to get a sense of what this message is, because it’s so interwoven in the text,” Mr. Gaissert says.

   Ms. Duryea must essentially play her character as seen through her daughter’s eyes, since her appearance is born from her daughter’s imagination. Her perception is “probably always not quite as true as it was (when the mother was alive),” Mr. Gaissert says.

   The play is only 30 minutes long. Mr. Boyer originally wrote Suicide Gal as a full play, but he whittled it down to its essence of the mother and daughter characters, Mr. Gaissert says. “That’s why it’s so tight. The core of it is a solid story. It’s got a message that needs to be told.”

   At this length, Mr. Gaissert and his crew can’t bring the play to New York to sell it. The purpose of this staging is to collect feedback, which will be given to the playwright so he can improve and expand it.

   ”I’m not interested in putting on a production of ‘Rent’ just to do it,” Mr. Gaissert says. “What I like to do are things that have something that speaks to somebody, a story that needs to be told, that’s yearning to be told.”

• 
  
  Suicide Gal, Won’t You Come Out Tonight, Come Out Tonight will be performed at the Theater/Dance Workshop, 1012 Brunswick Ave., Trenton, Nov. 7, 7:30 p.m., Nov. 8, 2 p.m. Tickets cost $12. A reception with refreshments and discussion will follow; 609-213-4578.