The Mind of ‘Severance’

Before the psychological sci-fi thriller “Severance” had us pondering the sacrifices we make for work-life balance, there was a kooky student-produced play at WWU with a doorless office, a mysterious memory lapse and a cameo from a minotaur. 

The Emmy-nominated show starts its second season this week on Apple TV+, with more dystopian adventures of biotech workers who have willingly undergone “severance” procedures to erase their memories of either their work lives when they’re at home, and their home lives when they’re at work. 

While the rest of us await the fates of the innies, outies, and all those baby goats, we asked the show’s creator, showrunner and executive producer Dan Erickson, ’07, B.A., English – creative writing, a few questions about his WWU roots. 

Severance got its start in Old Main: At Western, Erickson wrote “Convention,” a play he directed with Abe Manion, ’08, B.A., theatre, with STP (Student Theatre Productions) staged in the Old Main Theatre. A decade later, some of the elements would make their way into the pilot for “Severance.”

“It definitely had a lot of the early DNA of ‘Severance,’ ” Erickson sys. “It involved these four guys who work in an office, and they’re in this closed cubicle with no door. Slowly over the course of the play they realize that none of them can remember ever having been outside. They’ve always been at this desk.

“It’s really weird: There’s a minotaur. There’s people eating packing peanuts. It was one of those things where I sort of wrote it and thought, ‘Only at Western could I get this thing put up.’”

Best advice he got at Western: Erickson is particularly grateful to have worked with Pacific Northwest playwright Bryan Willis  who was teaching at Western when Erickson was a student. 

“He had a lot of great pearls of wisdom,” Erickson says. “One thing he said was, don’t lose your ego too early. Don’t let it take over you but keep a kernel of it, because you have to believe that what you’re doing, on some level, is special, and what you’re doing is working. Don’t become so deferential that you’re just trying to follow the rules and make something that is acceptable. Make something that is not acceptable. 

“This is a perspective you get at a place like Western, where people are encouraged to be a little bit more unconventional.”

Hard lessons in showrunning: Erickson was the artistic director of Western’s improv group, the Dead Parrots Society. The performances that year weren’t very well attended, he remembers, “but dammit, we had fun.” 

But it wasn’t all fun. Erickson still remembers falling short in organizing an important show for the group. “I had to face the troupe and a couple of them very kindly called me out and said, ‘Dan, we have put you in this position and we put our trust in you, and you have to be a little better.’ It stung, but you have to take moments like that and grow from them. I think that was the first time I’d been in charge of anything, so it was a really good experience.” 

The power of improv: “I recommend anybody who wants to be a writer should do improv,” he says. “It’s a great way to exercise certain muscles. Oftentimes when I’m writing I will sort of improvise the scene. I’ll do the voices. I’ll sit there in my house and I’ll improv both sides of the scene. And it frees me up a little bit, creatively. It’s all about not thinking too much and just going with your gut on certain things.” 

Best day in Bellingham: Erickson is a big fan of The Ham. He was delighted to visit last summer when “Severance” star Britt Lower was in town performing with Shoestring Circus. “It was a great melding of two worlds,” Erickson says. “It was so fun to show her around.

His favorite Bellingham day would include jumping into the swimming holes in Whatcom Falls Park.

“I would walk Fairhaven, because that’s a great spot,” he says. “I would get a drink at the Black Cat – is it still there? Thank God. And I think cheesy fries at the Horseshoe would be a good way to round it out.”