I didn’t know what to expect when I sent the emails.

I had seen Megan, Rob, Erick and Kathleen on stage before — in different projects, not together — but, aside from Rob and Kathleen appearing in a couple of my plays, I had never worked with them directly. The odds were slim, I felt, that any of them would agree to my little idea.

Whatever fears I had were unfounded. All four were willing and eager to collaborate on a type of play I had not attempted before. The new piece started with just a few lines of dialogue and a vague plot.

We were going to improvise the rest.

“Made-Up Stories About My Ancestors” began life as a play with just one defined role: that of the narrator, me (more on that in a minute). Everything else would be discovered through improv. But this wasn’t to be an improvised performance: In the end, we would have a final script and the show would not change from night to night.

We began rehearsals by talking about our own ancestry and the struggles with finding stories about people who are more than a few generations removed from us.

Both my parents, for instance, have ancestors who immigrated from Ireland (too far back for me to claim citizenship, sadly), but nothing is known of their life before coming to America. Erick said he knows even less about his heritage, and said as much in the play:

“I don’t know much about my family, except that Dad was a pirate.”

(For the record: Erick’s dad was not a pirate. Probably.)

Such a blank slate gave us lots of room to discover fantastic stories that could be, but probably are not, true. In the course of the play, the character Adam learns that his lineage includes:

• Flax-whackers
• Mushroom farmers
• Pickpockets
• Highwaymen
• Landowners-turned-pirates
• Dung farmers
• Piss mongers
• Ankle-showers
• Shoe-shiners
• Geoffrey Chaucer
• Johannes Gutenberg
• Brian Boru

Safe to say that with the possible exception of Brian Boru (owing to my obsession with Irish history), there’s no way I could have come up with such a storied list on my own. Best part is, I didn’t have to. Over the course of about a half-dozen rehearsals and countless improv games, we collectively discovered the story, the jokes and the accents that would become the final product.

As fun as the process was, it also marked a milestone: The first time I had co-written a play with the actors involved, and the first time in 25 years I performed onstage with other actors.

Writing can be an intimidating and lonely pursuit. When it’s just you, your brain and the blank page, the freedom to create is boundless. That also breeds the dreaded inner editor, who creeps into your brain with thoughts like, “that’s no good.” Theater is a collaborative art form, but most of the time the work starts with the page, and that starts with a writer alone.

“Made-Up Stories” was completely different. I opened myself up to letting other people take the reins, and we all shared in the creation of this piece. At no point did we have a clash of egos or ideas.

The operating principle of improv is “yes, and …” That mantra made the process flow seamlessly. We tried out scenarios, dialogue and jokes. Whatever made us laugh stayed in. What didn’t work, we stopped doing.

Each rehearsal we’d workshop at least one snippet of the play, practice different scenarios (and accents). The first improvised bit, where Erick tries to do online research with the help of librarian Rob, was in the final draft after one rehearsal.

Others took more time. There’s a scene toward the end where Megan tries to talk Adam into having Geoffrey Chaucer as his ancestor. Originally it was William Shakespeare, but that just didn’t work no matter how many times we tried it.

Other storylines, like the flax-whacker and the dung farmer, we got right away and figured out ways to put them in the script.

And the story kept evolving, even as opening night approached.

I should note that I’m not particularly good at improv comedy. But I didn’t have to be; Megan, Kathleen, Erick and Rob all have great instincts and are themselves seasoned improv performers. We leaned on one another’s strengths and, although the final piece was fast-paced, it was never chaotic.

“Made-Up Stories About My Ancestors” was part of the Reading Theater Project‘s 10th annual 5-Minute Fringe Festival, playing to nearly sold-out crowds from Feb. 27-March 2. The play was a joke-filled sprint and still, just a few days after the final curtain fell, I can’t believe it’s already over.

I still remember the moment I decided to keep writing plays: After the end of my first 5-Minute Fringe Festival, in 2018, the delightful actress Kath Godwin, who played Mother Gothel in my short comedy “Trapped,” asked “what are you doing next?” And that was all it took.

Now we are all moving on to other projects. My next work will not be a devised improv piece and thus is a return to the solitary form of playwriting.

I’ll have to write all the words this time.

With any luck, my inner editor will respond with more “yes, and” than “but no.”

If you’re wondering how these seemingly disparate elements — Chaucer, pirates, piss-mongers — fit together into a single story, all I can say is: You had to be there. That’s the magic of live theater.