By Mary Best
Managing Editor
SBU Theater produces a wide variety of plays – from William Shakespeare and Anton Chekov to festivals of one-act plays by regional playwrights. This fall’s drama carries on that tradition with the full-length debut of Washington D.C. playwright Kathryn Coughlin’s “More than Before.”
“The play is a meta-theatrical look at grief and explores the trickle-down effects of loss,” Coughlin said.
The main character, Girl, loses her best friend very suddenly, and the play explores the effect of the loss on her relationship with her mother and her boyfriend, according to Coughlin.
Besides the archetypal names for the characters — Girl, Boyfriend, Mother and Dead Girl — the story is told in a vignette style, instead of a traditional narrative arc, according to Coughlin.
Coughlin, inspired by an incident in her adolescence, began working on the play two years ago.
“When I was 14, my best friend died in a snowmobiling accident,” Coughlin said. “I was young enough to understand what death was, but I wasn’t old enough to process it in a healthy or productive way.”
Although she was inspired by the tragedy she faced at a young age, Coughlin said she did not write the play as a form of therapy for dealing with the loss of her friend.
“I think art can be (therapeutic), but I don’t think that should be the main purpose,” Coughlin said. “This play should not be my way of dealing with the loss of my best friend at 14, but instead an exploration of that experience that other people can get something out of. That’s one of the reasons I have been working on it so long — to find better and better ways to crystallize those feelings and finding universality in those feelings of loss and grief and how people deal with it.”
Ed. Simone, director of the theater program, approached Coughlin about doing the show last spring.
“(Simone) did one of my one-act plays in 2008, and when I sent him this piece, he really connected with it,” Coughlin said. “He mentioned last spring it might be a piece that could work, and here we are today.”
Coughlin said this is the first time she has passed on her work completely without her interference, but seeing a different vision of her work is also her favorite part of theater.
“It’s a strange thing to hand someone something you’ve been working on for two and a half years and is very near and dear to your heart,” she said. “I think that’s what’s great about theater. It’s very collaborative and people do what they’re the best at.”
Coughlin currently works as an assistant producer and dramaturg (a consultant to a theater company involved in research and development for plays) for the Source Festival in Washington, D.C. In addition, one of her plays was selected for a 10-minute play festival earlier this week at the Kennedy Center. Despite her busy schedule and devotion to her newest project — a full length play taking place in Washington, D.C. about how fear plays into our lives — she plans to return to campus in a few weeks to see the completed production.
“I’m excited to see it all happen. The lights, the sound — that’s the dream. That’s why you want to be a playwright,” Coughlin said.
Coughlin believes “More than Before” is a great play for college students, and she looks forward to seeing SBU Theater’s interpretation of it.
“It’s a really cool feeling to know that everyone is coming here every night to work on my play and my words are being read somewhere,” Coughlin said. “That’s why you write it. Nobody writes a play for the music stand.”
