Catherine Bush
Catherine Bush, resident playwright at Barter Theatre, cringes when people call any of her children’s plays “cute.” Imaginative, clever, delightful, visionary, but not “cute.”
Bush has written many plays for Barter Theatre and especially for the Barter Players who perform for children. She says that there are a few guidelines that you follow with children’s plays that aren’t necessary for adults.
“Action. Action. Action. Keep it moving. If you don’t, they’ll get wiggly. Chronological order is usually best. Kids are smart — don’t condescend to them. Invoke their imagination. Stand on a cube, call it a mountain, and they’ll go with you. They don’t need the literal. In this, they are far superior to some adults I know.
“If your characters are changing locations, make sure one of them mentions where they’re going just before they leave to get there. For example, if they’re going to the castle, have one of them say ’Let us away to the castle.’ That way a shift in the lights and sound will accomplish the scene change without necessitating a set change. This is standard practice for Barter Player scripts,” Bush says.
This is particularly necessary for the Players because they take their shows on the road. They travel with a cast of six, which is the maximum number of actors who can fit in the van and still have room for set(s).
When Bush writes a play that she knows is going to tour, she must keep that in mind. It doesn’t mean that there can only be six characters in a play. “The Call of the Wild” has 35 characters. It does mean she must allow time in the script for actors to change from one character to another and create a theatrical convention that allows it to happen quickly.
Bush says that “Writing for adults might be easier, because they’re willing to be more reflective, to wait and see what’s going to happen. To sit in the unknown. Kids won’t put up with that nonsense. But a good children’s play will delight the child in all of us.”
In 2006, Bush was visiting Abingdon and saw the Players’ production of “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.
“It was brilliant — everything I love in a play. I immediately did two things. I bought a ticket for the next day’s performance, and I asked Katy Brown (the Players’ artistic director at the time) if I could write plays for her. The rest is history,” she says.
Many of her children’s plays are adaptations of books or stories.
“I’ve only adapted two books that weren’t in the public domain. One was‘Old Turtle and the Broken Truth’and the other was a musical based on the‘Clementine’book series. You have to figure out who holds the rights, get in touch with them and convince them you know what you’re doing. And at the end of the day, you end up splitting your royalties with them. So, I would much rather adapt books/stories in the public domain. Besides the two I’ve already mentioned, I’ve adapted 20 plays from books/fairy tales/stories/legends in the public domain. I’m currently working on rewrites for my 33rd Barter Players show - ‘Here Comes Suzy Snowflake,’ which will be going up with Christmas,” she says.
When asked about her plays’ success she says it depends on how you define success. Some plays make more money that others, but she feels all her Players shows have been successful because the “audience was served.”
