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Certainly playwright Mary Zimmerman does. And so does The Rogue Theatre, which is staging Zimmerman鈥檚 鈥淪ecret in the Wings,鈥� based on somewhat obscure European fairy tales.

All good fairy tales have darkness woven together with humor and magic. 鈥淪ecret鈥� is no different.

It starts as a young girl鈥檚 parents take her to a babysitter. They see him as a nice man. She sees him as a monster with a tail and an urge to eat her.

He asks her to marry him. She refuses. Many times. And each time he does, he turns to his book of stories and reads her one as the story is acted out.

There鈥檚 the one about seven swans 鈥� seven brothers who are too noisy for Pops, so he turns them into swans. Their sister is determined to save them and is silent for seven years as she sews a jacket for each. Those jackets will restore them to human form. But she runs out of time and one jacket has just one sleeve, so that brother goes through life with a human arm and a swan鈥檚 wing.

In another, a king offers his daughter in marriage to any man who can make her smile. But if he fails, it鈥檚 off with his head.

鈥淕irls in these stories are so stoic and heroic and suffer selflessly,鈥� Zimmerman said about the play in a 2004 interview. 鈥淪o, young teenage girls love this show. I think also that in a pretty adult way, the stories name something about the menace of childhood, the helplessness, the dependence, the sense of things being much larger than you are.鈥�

Cynthia Meier directs, and the cast is made up of Bryn Booth, Patty Gallagher, Holly Griffith, Claire Hancock, Hunter Hnat, Ryan Parker Knox, Joseph McGrath, Aaron Shand and Matt Walley.

鈥淪ecret in the Wings鈥� previews at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 28 and March 1; opening is 7:30 p.m. March 2. Regular performances are 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, and 2 p.m. Sundays through March 17 at 300 E. University in the Historic Y. Previews are $28; regular performances $38.

It runs 80 minutes, with no intermission. Info: 551-2053 or .