Catherine Bush has "best job"

Catherine Bush, Barter Theatre’s resident playwright, say she has the best job in the world. “There are lots of people who would kill to have my gig, and they’re not getting it.”

However, becoming a playwright wasn’t her original goal. She studied industrial technology at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky, and ended up working at Whirlpool designing vacuum cleaners.

Then she and a friend went to London and to the theater. “I was blown away, and my life was changed,” she says. When she returned, she and her friend went to see Broadway shows on tour in Cincinnati, Ohio.

“One day at work, the daily newsletter said the community theater was looking for people to work behind stage. I thought, ‘This is perfect. I love theater, and I won’t have to be in front of the lights.’ I ended up stage managing a one-act play and was bitten by the bug. Someone talked me into auditioning, and I was cast and loved it. I was obsessed. I didn’t do it very long, maybe a year or two, before I decided New York needed me. I want to go on record saying that they did not need me in New York, but I needed to be in New York,” she says.

She auditioned for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and was accepted, so she rented her house and moved to The Big Apple.

“I quickly found out that I stunk as an actor,” she says. But one of her professors told students that while they were waiting for the phone to ring after an audition, they’d be writing. A producer at a show she was ushering encouraged her to write, so she began to create her own work.

“I adapted ‘Gone with the Wind’ into a musical parody called ‘I’ll Never Be Hungry Again.’ I found a composer and went to my community theater at home and asked if I raised the money and brought actors from New York could we do the play there. They said, ‘Sure.’ What a leap of faith they made. I could have been a crappy writer as far as they knew. My first draft was about as long as the Bible. It was four and a half hours long. Another friend showed me how to make some great cuts. I asked everybody I knew to give me money. We did the play, and it went really well,” she says.

Bush wrote several more musical adaptations and took each one home to her community theater. She started writing original plays after she saw “Proof” by David Auburn.

“I’d never had a playwriting class. My education was going to see a lot of plays,” she says. Then she sent “The Other Side of the Mountain,” to Barter’s Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights.

“They’d rejected everything I’d ever sent to the festival before. I sent ‘The Other Side of the Mountain.’ It had lesbians in it, and I thought, ‘They’ll never pick this to do in Southwest Virginia.’ They picked it, and it won the festival and that began my relationship with Barter Theatre. At one point I had a play at Barter, two plays and a mini-production in the festival. That’s when Rick Rose decided it might be cheaper to just bring me down here, and I was ready to leave New York. I’d been there 14 years. The minute I stepped into Abingdon in 2003, I remember thinking ‘I like this town,’ she says.

As playwright in residence, Bush writes several plays a year for the Barter Players and for Barter Theatre. While she loves both, she says writing for children helped her learn her craft.

“When you think of children’s theater, you may think of fuzzy bunny suits and actors talking down to children. It’s not like that at all. It’s the most beautiful, theatrical magical way of doing theater. The players don’t have a big budget, so everyone has to use their imagination to create these amazing worlds. It’s a very specific style of writing, and I love it, it’s my favorite. John Hardy, who started First Light, says only in theater can you stand on a cube, call it a mountain top, and everyone will believe you. It’s the beautiful thing about theater, it’s what I love best about it. We’re asked not just to watch but to actively engage.

“Kids are smarter than adults and tougher. If you don’t keep it moving and keep it active, if you put in anything that doesn’t need to be there and doesn’t keep it moving, they’ll start wiggling. So, they’re a tough audience but the best audience. Children’s plays are my favorite, because I get to see the reaction from the audience. They’re not cynical. They’re wide open. I go up to give a curtain speech and hold the door for these kids coming in, and they are so excited. Many of them don’t see live theater, so when they see something that enriches their lives, they let you see that happen,” she says.

Bush also sees her plays as a way to contribute.

“Before I started in theater, I had a pretty good life — a house on the lake and friends. But I was restless. Surely, I wasn’t put on this planet to design vacuum cleaners. I found my purpose with theater. Then I started working here, and I learned about service to an audience and that inspires me. It is a mission, my moral imperative to help people see other people’s stories, to see another point of view, to entertain, engage and inspire empathy and inspire imagination. Imagination can change the world,” she says.

That service is also obvious in her children’s plays. Bush’s princesses don’t wait for the prince to rescue them. “That’s not a good role model for the princess or the prince,” she says. She heard about a poem that had Rapunzel cutting off her own hair and saving herself. She used that when she adapted “Rapunzel” for the players.

“I don’t believe in women waiting around for someone to save them. When we have a princess play, little girls come in their princess dresses to see these shows. I hope when they leave, they want to be a bad ass and not wait for someone to save them. I want them to save the world,” she says.

Bush’s adult plays also serve her audience by exposing them to unfamiliar viewpoints. She is working on a play about the riots in Charlottesville, Virginia. “I want to address the issue of race in this nation from the point of view of a person who has privilege – a privilege I never knew I had. I want to say, ‘Let’s look at this from other people’s points of view for a few minutes.’”

Bush likes her adaptations and original work for different reasons. Adaptations provide her with a parameter, and she sees taking the words on the page and changing them into dialogue and actions as a puzzle.

“Sometimes I have to change the story to keep it active, but I still have those parameters. Fairy tales don’t have much dialogue. It’s all narration. I love to adapt, and I have to say I think of the two things I do, I’m probably a better adapter. I don’t mean to demean my other work. When you’re creating your own work, you have the freedom to not know where it’s going to go and let the characters take over and that’s a big rush. There are plusses to both. I’m not the best playwright in the country. I’m pretty good, but there are some playwrights out there who are fearless, amazing and relentless. But I’ll put myself up there as one of the best adapters in the country,” she says.

As playwright in residence, she does have some control over her plays once they go into production.

“I try not to butt in too much. I go to first readings. If I think something doesn’t work, they’ll usually say, ‘Well let us try it and see.’ When you’re acting and directing, it’s a sacred place where they can experiment, and they can fail. You don’t want the playwright in there judging you, so I try not to go too often. Sometimes the director comes and says, ‘This isn’t working, what do we do?’ Usually the answer is cut it. Sometimes I have to add something, because I have one plus one in act one and it equals three in act two. I always say that I lay the foundation for the house, and the directors and actors build the house.

“I can’t think of any cons to my job. I have work commissioned every year. I know every actor in the company, so even if I don’t know who’s cast in it, I know who I see in it and that helps give that character a voice. I attend rehearsals when I need to. I can be consulted in five minutes if they have a problem. I get to work with the greatest resident company. They can do anything. They can play Shakespeare and walk across the street and tap dance. They can sing, and they can be funny or tragic. That doesn’t happen to everyone. It is a fantastic gift,” she says.

Her work is also produced by other companies. “There are two thoughts on who owns the works when a playwright is done. If some theaters commission a play or produce it for the first time, they take five percent of your royalties when someone else produces it. Rick Rose isn’t like that. I write, he pays me, and then it’s mine. I submit a play to other theaters, either equity or professional, and try to get second and third productions.

“The most luck I’ve had is with ‘The Three Musketeers.’ It’s been done in Boston, California, Orlando, New York and Indiana. The Barter Players Encore Company take ‘Frosty’ on tour every Christmas and other theater companies do as well. It’s hard to get other productions, but I manage. I eke out a living. I’m not going to lie, it’s not the easiest way to work, but I love it,” she says.

Bush says that musicals are more difficult to get produced than a drama or comedy, because they require more personnel and are more expensive to produce. However, she’s written several, including “A Woman Called Moses” about Harriet Tubman, which has never been produced. Several of her other plays, “The Executioner’s Song,” “Just a Kiss,” “Frankenstein Summer,” The Quiltmaker, “Trading Paint,” “I’ll Never be Hungry Again,” “The Road to Appomattox,” “A Jarful of Fireflies,” Red Badge of Courage,” “The Call of the Wild,” and “Sleepy Hollow,” have been produced across the country. Locations include San Antonio, New York, Burnsville, Mars Hill, Burbank, Dallas, Savannah, Jackson Hole and others.

“A lot of people say, ‘You haven’t made it yet.’ I’m like ‘Are you kidding? I have made it,” she says.

For more information about Bush, visit catherinebushplays.com.

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