Award-winning Oakland-born playwright Marcus Gardley never knows where his writing is going. In an interview a week prior to the world premiere of his newest play, A Thousand Ships, Gardley said, “These characters reveal themselves to me over time. They just keep talking and talking, and I keep writing and writing. It’s a crap-shoot any time I sit down. Sometimes it takes six years, like it did with this play, to realize what they’re telling me the play is about.” Inevitably, the journey from first idea to what it has become today is improbable. The new production presented by Oakland Theater Project was awarded a Hewlett 50 Arts Commission originally granted in 2017 to the recently-closed California Shakespeare Theater. Sailing on the successful wings of Cal Shake’s production of his black odyssey, Gardley planned to adapt Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. His thoughts swirled around ships, which led to sails, then sailors hanging linen on lines and ending in wet laundry. He ruminated on and remembered his childhood, during which his grandmothers hung their laundry outdoors. He tugged on their skirts for attention—and received it. “I thought about the way they cared for me, even in the moments they allowed me to be free and just play,” Gardley said. “They supported my imagination. I even remember playing with my great-grandmothers. I’d pretend they were a character and they’d act along. A Thousand Ships evolved into an homage to them and how they cared for everybody, especially children. They were community-centered people.” Through the process of writing about them, Gardley gained appreciation for what their lives exemplified and taught him about caretaking. If family members were in jail, not doing positive things or not speaking to someone else in the family, his grandmothers intervened or found alternative ways to check in and keep an eye on everybody. Gardley said lessons he learned and adopted from their example proved “invaluable.” A Thousand Ships tells the story of two elder Black women and their families, set on the eve of the 2008 presidential election. The women’s generation-spanning adventuresome tales flow from their work in the Oakland shipyards during wartime to realizing their dreams and becoming co-owners of a hair salon. Their friendship is charted along fluid rivers of caretaking, loss, retribution, strength and survival mingled with humor, joy, music and down-to-earth practicality. “It’s also the story of Oakland,” Gardley said. “We call out names of Oakland streets and areas. The main characters are two women who are in their 80s, so you have 80 years of what it’s like to be in Oakland. It’s about place, but also where are we going next and how do we go there together. We’re asked to remember how hopeful we were at the time of that earlier election. “People here have come from all over, and that’s an idea we celebrate,” Gardley continued. “Most places, if you come from somewhere else, you’re considered an outsider. In Oakland, I find people embrace otherness. That’s something I love, and it’s a key element.” Gardley writes honestly about the loss in their lives, but steers away from collapsing or falling into scenes filled with despair. Instead, humor, strength, resilience and memories of his grandmothers’ no-nonsense wisdom “bully away” the somberness.  “If I was crying about something, they’d say, ‘Get it all out,’” Gardley said. “They’d never say, ‘Don’t cry.’ But then they’d say, ‘Now, what’re you gonna do? Now that you’ve exorcised that sadness, what are you gonna do next?’ In the play, I avoid sitting in the tragedy.” A penultimate climactic scene in Act II illustrates his approach. “The moment begins with joy; they experience something tragic and begin to splinter,” Gardley said. “They’re either going to find a way to get along and get over their conflict or they’re going to separate forever. A (third) character is going to implode if they don’t put aside their frustrations and rally around him. You see they just can’t give up on him. You see how much they love this unworthy man. It’s powerful.” The two women, Adeline and Laney, model his great-grandmothers who arrived in Oakland not knowing each other and became best friends. A breach in their relationship resulted in them not speaking to each other for 20 years. “I wrote the dream of them I wanted,” Gardley said. “This is the magic of theater: I can write a dream onto the stage. What I’m after is reconciliation. As an artist, I’m after answering a puzzle I can’t quite figure out. These larger-than-life women are combative, but they’re the foundation and the safe harbor everybody goes to. When they do unite, everybody benefits.” Composer/singer Molly Holm’s music plays an integral role. The two collaborated previously on Gardley’s Love is A Dream House in Lorin and This World In a Woman’s Hands. Gardley said they “share the same soul,” and her work pulls out sublime moments. Depths and heights experienced for which no words are adequate can be achieved through music. Transitions and moments of joy and ritual transform the stage into a metaphoric, theatrical church. “It’s a world where everyone gets to participate, engage, interact with [and] leave the space with questions, debate, laughter, new ideas,” Gardley said. “Molly is amazing.”  Characters he’s writing about live in Gardley’s head 24/7 while he’s forming a play. “I live alone for a reason,” he said, partially joking and also in earnest. “They’re even with me when I sleep.” The pervasive habit in some ways contributes to his plays coming to resemble seamless tapestries of human life. Characters’ different personalities, generations, faiths, political positions, social and economic situations, and other features are woven into a quilt with threads Gardley says cause audiences to root for the characters. “Because we feel proud to be part of this tapestry,” Gardley said, “we want these women to stay connected. Audiences [are caused to] think, how do we celebrate difference? How do we move forward after we’ve cried? Is it enough to acknowledge change happens and the future is unstoppable? I say, what we can do is call this place home and protect each other. That’s the arc of the show.” ‘A Thousand Ships’ runs through Jan. 5 at Oakland Theater Project, 1501 Martin Luther King Jr Way, Oakland; 510.646.1126; oaklandtheaterproject.org/ships.