Catherine Trieschmann’s plays include The Bridegroom of Blowing Rock (L. Arnold Weissberger award), Before the Fire, Crooked, The World of Others, How the World Began, Small and Selfish Creatures, and Hot Georgia Sunday. Her work has been produced Off-Broadway at the Women’s Project, the Bush Theatre (London), Florida Stage, the Summer Play Festival, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, Theatre in the Square, American Theatre Company and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She has received commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club and South Coast Repertory Theatre. Originally from Athens, Georgia, she currently resides in a small town in western Kansas.

Check out Catherine’s plays,
available from Samuel French

The Bridegroom of Blowing Rock
Crooked

Q & A with Catherine Trieschmann

Q: Your play THE BRIDEGROOM OF BLOWING ROCK focuses on a romance between a young blind woman and an African-American Union soldier in the mountains of Appalachia during the civil war. What sort of research did you do while writing this piece? How did that research guide the development of the play and its characters?

In order to write this play, I went on a road-trip with my then fiancé (now husband) where we toured dozens of civil war sites, and where I fell asleep at each and every one, only to wake up cursing myself for ever having thought that writing a civil war play was a good idea! It was not until the Museum of Appalachian Life and Culture in Knoxville, Tennessee that the play became a possibility for me. I became fascinated with how the Civil war was fought in the mountains and how it defied a lot of preconceptions I had about the war. Coupled with the amazing culture of Appalachia and the rich tradition of storytelling and music, it seemed like a natural setting for my play. I did a lot of research and books like Victims: A True Story of the Civil War by Philip Shaw Paludan, Bushwhackers by William K. Trotter, and The Heart of Confederate Appalachia by John C. Inscoe were very helpful in creating the world (for those of you interested); however, while the play is inspired by the history and culture of Appalachia, it is very much a work of fiction. It is fantastical and romantic and touched by the supernatural in places.

Q: In both THE BRIDEGROOM OF BLOWING ROCK and CROOKED, you focus on individuals that are on the outskirts of society, their physical difference highlighting their distance. In the case of CROOKED, the protagonist is a teenager named Laney with dystonia, a condition that leaves her with a crooked back. Her newfound friendship with Maribel, a devout Christian, leads her to experiment with religion, storytelling and sexuality in ways that strain her relationship with her very secular mother. What do you find attracts you to these sorts of characters?

Aren’t all writers attracted to outsiders due to our turbulent childhoods? Actually, my childhood wasn’t particularly turbulent; it wasn’t until adulthood that it all came unraveling apart, but I digress... CROOKED, in particular, is a very personal play to me and draws from my experience growing up as an evangelical Christian/budding writer/daughter of an academic--a very interesting mix. I think the three characters in some ways represent different aspects of myself, which goes a long way to explain why I am so drawn to the clash between faith and reason and why that conflict emerges time and time again in my work. I suppose I am drawn to characters on the margins to explore these issues because they often have the most at stake.

Q: When and/or how did you know that you wanted to create plays?

I went to college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where they gave undergraduates an enormous amount of time and space to create our own work. I acted in many plays there and then wrote and directed my first play, a terrible, pretentious tome about Arthur Miller and Elia Kazan and the Committee of Un-American Activities that made me never want to direct anything ever again, but did not, fortunately, kill my desire to write. I really learned my craft living in my parent’s basement during my MFA at the University of Georgia and forcing myself to write five pages a day come hell or high water. Just thinking about that little corner of the basement with its yellow walls, green carpet and garden window gets me in the mood to churn out pages.

Q: What inspires you to take on a new project?

I’m very inspired by rural landscapes. I was raised in Georgia, and BRIDEGROOM and CROOKED are very Southern in both style and concern, as are most of my other plays. I now find myself living in Western Kansas of all places, and I’m obsessively writing Kansas plays. There’s a very specific sensibility out here, and while it’s not nearly as flamboyant as the South, it’s wrenching and wild in its own suppressed Midwestern way. I’ve written only one play that takes place in a city and so far, no one likes it. I may need to come to terms with the fact that it’s not very good.

Q: Have you ever come across a production that made you see one of your plays in a new or unexpected way?

The director of the Florida Stage production of BRIDEGROOM made the startling choice of having the Bridegroom enter as a bear during the dream sequence and morph into a man as he began to talk. It was a thrilling moment that seamlessly tied into the play’s mythology. If we ever re-print the play, I’ll write it into the stage directions! (For those of you wondering, the stage craft was simple: the actor wore a bear skin rug complete with head, entered in a crouch and rose up to reveal the man underneath. Throw a little fog in there, and you’re good to go!)

Q: What are you currently working on?

I’m currently revising a play that was commissioned by Manhattan Theatre Club called HOW THE WORLD BEGAN that’s in negotiations to be done in London and New York next year. I’m also trying to get through the first draft of a new Kansas play, a task which would go much faster if I did not have a baby and a three year old who refuse to raise themselves. I’m hoping someone comes up with a pill for that very soon. Dear readers, please let me know if you hear of anything.

(Photo courtesy of the author)