Austin Playhouse's Marie Fahlgren recently interviewed author/playwright Katherine Catmull about the process of adapting her young adult novel Summer and Bird for the Austin Playhouse stage.
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| Katherine Catmull on the Summer and Bird set. |
Where did you find your inspiration to write Summer and Bird?
I was babysitting the two young daughters of friends of mine, and I wanted to make up a story to tell them that night. In the car on the way over it popped into my mind: two girls who looked like them, named Summer and Bird, whose parents had gone missing--a good babysitting tale! But they had already picked out books for that night. So when I got home I wrote down all I had thought of, the first page or so, and filed it away. A few years later when I decided to write a book, I was looking through old scribbles and found that one, and it grabbed me.
The girl Summer was based on recently graduated from college, by the way! And the younger one will graduate soon. Children move with terrifying swiftness!
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| Madi Palomo and Sarah Chong Harmer. |
What challenges did you face when adapting the book Summer and Bird into the stage adaptation?
That book is quite dense in many ways: dense language, dense with images, dense with ideas, dense with plot. It was my first book, you know, so I was like: HERE IS EVERYTHING I KNOW. It was also a bit melancholy, partly because it’s about family breakups, older-sister anguish, etc and partly I suspect because it was a sad period of my life (my mother had had Alzheimer’s for six years when I began it, and she died four years later, just before I finished my first draft—in the book, the Swan, this lovely white creature Summer can no longer communicate with, holds some of my feelings about all that).
But a one-hour play cannot be dense—it needs to be spare and bright and clear. It’s also a bit unfair to invite a bunch of young folk to a play and have it be relentlessly gloomy. It was actually Lara as she dramaturged my early drafts who helped me solve that one: she suggested I reconceive the Raven, who is a quiet, serious figure in the book. She said she imagined the Raven in a top hat and shiny suit, and that was all she had to say—I immediately got a vivid idea of this jokey trickster figure.
So basically the process of adapting was twofold: cut cut cut cut (I was so sad to lose Summer’s visit to the Green Home! and the patchwork bird!), nope, cut some more, nope, more than that; and brighten and lighten it up.
What did you enjoy the most while writing the adaptation of Summer and Bird?
That Raven was enormously fun to write! I love a snarky outsider who always has a rude remark to make. It’s almost the opposite of me: I’m a ridiculously earnest person who has more than once managed to ruin a joke setup by answering seriously: “Hm that’s interesting, I wonder why a priest a rabbi went would go to a bar together! Some sort of ecumenical effort, perhaps?” etc. But if I can write the Raven, I must have a snarky trickster in me somewhere.
Since you are also an actress, what was it like to have your writing world and theatre world combine?
It’s the loveliest. I was an actor first, so collaborating with others and adjusting to their needs and taking notes—that’s all quite natural to me. It makes me feel supported rather than challenged, as it does for some playwrights. Writing is horribly LONELY. I also very much appreciate that hard deadline theater provides.
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| Madi Palomo, Sarah Chong Harmer, and Jen Brown |
What message do you hope young audience members will take away after seeing Summer and Bird?
Oh gosh, what a great question and I have no idea! Something about how families can be apart and yet together, I hope; something about how being a sibling is both the hardest thing and the best, most precious thing (it has been so in my life—I have five younger siblings). Also something about how we bring ourselves when we make meaning—we do “choose what things mean,” as Ben says, and we can choose differently if we like. Nothing important means only one thing.
When did you start writing?
I wrote tons as a kid, and then as a teenager I got pretentious and anxious and stopped. Grad school in English lit did NOT make me any less pretentious and anxious, let me tell you, and it took a while for that to wear off. The first thing I wrote and finished (the finishing is key) as an adult was a FronteraFest monologue I wrote at the end of 2002 and performed in 2003, called “Pizza Apostrophe” — a woman calling to the pizza she has not ordered but still hopes will come. “O how could you not tell from the ache in my voice that I wanted extra cheese?” I was 42! Talk about a late re-start.
Is there anything else you would like young audience members to know about either you or the story of Summer and Bird?
The main thing I would say—my second book, The Radiant Road, is actually about this—is don’t do what I did! Don’t get all shy and self-conscious about your beautiful makings, whether your making is writing or dancing or music or building robots or writing games or drawing or painting or WHATEVER. Whatever creative thing you do, please don’t stop. Keep going. We need your voice, we need you so badly. Keep going! And don’t forget to finish things, that’s EVERYTHING.
Summer and Bird runs May 3 - 12 at Austin Playhouse. Friday and Saturday at 7:30pm, Saturday and Sunday at 2pm. All student tickets are FREE! Adults are sliding scale: $7 - $28.
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