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BY LUCIA MAURO
Writing is typically considered an isolated profession limited to the scribe and a pen, pencil or keyboard. But Evanston-based playwright Mia McCullough finds nourishment and inspiration from the collaborative process. A new resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists and author of Chagrin Falls, receiving its world premiere through Nov. 3 at Stage Left Theatre, she actively seeks out other artists who will seriously critique her work.
Yet she also admits that, early in her career, she was averse to joining groups—proof that even the most adamantly independent wordsmiths need a creative boost from their peers. McCullough, who grew up in the small working-class town of Hawthorne, N.Y., came to the Chicago area to attend Northwestern University, where she graduated in 1992 with a BS in theatre.
She focused on acting and directing until her junior year, but writing had been an underlying passion since her early teens. McCullough even focused on fiction and began writing dialogue seriously in high school. Nevertheless, theatre studies dominated for a few years until classes in playwriting, screenwriting and TV writing at Northwestern piqued her interest in creating scripts, not interpreting someone else’s play.
"Writing is one of those things you can empower yourself to do," says McCullough, feeling both elated and exhausted as she talks about her craft at an Evanston coffee shop the day after Chagrin Falls opened. "You don’t have to audition for it. Writing is something I always felt I could do on my own.
"Then I started taking more writing classes [in college] and was struck by my teachers’ different approaches. One insisted on complete outlines; another stressed that we should write three pages on anything every morning. It was interesting to give myself over to a process. But, by being exposed to these various approaches, I found out not only what worked for me but what didn’t work."
McCullough prefers not to plan everything out before she begins writing because she believes such rigid organization prevents her from discovering the circumstances that can take her characters in intriguing new directions or fresh insights they might convey in their dialogue. An idea or issue will strike her—usually on the eL—and the writer will let it gestate for a while. She’ll have a general idea for an ending but keeps herself open to the voices of her characters vigorously debating in her head.
During her "Creative Writing for the Media" class at Northwestern, McCullough was first exposed to artistic collaboration. Students would critique and discuss each other’s work—a process she found beneficial for shaping her voice.
"It was nice to have that community," she recalls. "But, after graduation, I was suddenly writing by myself and missed the collaboration."
McCullough decided to stay in Evanston after her then-boyfriend/now-husband got a good job in Chicago. At the time, though, she was not enmeshed in the local theatre scene. So it took her a while to find theatre professionals interested in looking at her scripts.
"The first three years after graduation," the playwright acknowledges, "were professionally miserable. I didn’t know how to branch out, and I missed the community of writers who really helped me shape my work in college."
Then, about five years ago, she hooked up with an informal group called the Playwrights Collective. It consists of eight writers, most of them from Evanston, who meet in each other’s living rooms and evaluate each other’s first drafts of scripts. In fact, McCullough presents only first drafts, which generally take her six months to complete. She refers to the Playwrights Collective as "a support group" and credits fellow members-friends with rekindling the constructive-collaborative spirit that inspired her in college. The collective is presenting a night of eight scenes, read by professional actors, Dec. 3 and 10 at the Chicago Cultural Center.
A number of writers in the Playwrights Collective were network playwrights at Chicago Dramatists. So they also encouraged her to become a network playwright. McCullough praises Chicago Dramatists and artistic director Russ Tutterow for their sincere, long-term dedication to developing new plays. Its staged readings and workshop programs have allowed her to get a clearer understanding of where she wants her script to go after hearing the words and getting input from the actors, director and audiences.
Chagrin Falls, her Julie Harris Award-winning drama, received its first reading at Chicago Dramatists. It went on to more staged readings at Famous Door and American Theatre Company. The writer has found that her plays change after each reading. When Stage Left decided to open its 20th anniversary season with Chagrin Falls, the creative team inspired further revisions.
McCullough takes us through the development of Chagrin Falls—a drama set in the title Oklahoma town whose main industries are death: a prison, where executions are regularly carried out; and a cattle slaughterhouse. When a young grad student, Patrice, arrives to witness the execution of a convicted child murderer, she encounters people who offer diverse perspectives on death in general while unexpectedly coming to terms with her own identity crisis as an Amer-Asian orphan.
Several stories are entwined, making Chagrin Falls more than a "death-penalty play." McCullough explores how mass-sanctioned death—from capital punishment to war to the slaughtering of animals for consumption—affects those who carry it out. The playwright ultimately brings the notion of blame to the forefront; how truly removed are we all from killing, whether it’s a convict or a cow? Yet she doesn’t accuse anyone or take sides. Rather the playwright makes us more acutely aware of who does our dirty work for us—butchers, soldiers and the anonymous figure who pulls the lever that releases poison into a Death Row inmate’s veins.
Uniting these different issues and viewpoints was a challenge. And McCullough, who got the idea for Chagrin Falls after working in a zoo where she had to kill mice to feed the birds of prey, was particularly conscious of not overloading the play with too many political arguments surrounding capital punishment or taking a specific stance.
"I picked different types of people," says McCullough, "in hopes that they would naturally have different outlooks. I let the characters have their opinions; I did not choose their opinions for them. The question also arose as to whose story is it. Patrice certainly comes in searching for one thing and leaves finding something else. But I think it’s Riley’s [the Vietnam vet’s] story because he changes the most and experiences the most compelling catharsis.
"I also was trying to discuss the many facets of the death-penalty issue and realized that I just had to stop researching the issue at a certain point and include only the most significant points. The idea of euthanasia is indirectly addressed [the prison guard’s mother is dying from cancer], but I had to be careful not to muddle things by focusing on this issue. It became another aspect of death. And I ultimately had to decide whether or not to bring in Jonas (the convicted killer) as a character. I knew that I did not want him to be a visible character, and we never actually see him."
McCullough says that all of these questions arose during the readings, which forced her to take a deeper look at Patrice’s motivations. In fact, Patrice was originally envisioned as being the adopted daughter of a couple whose young daughter was killed by Jonas. But the connections seemed too contrived. Instead Patrice, whose adoption by an American couple is a crucial part of the character’s search for her Vietnamese roots, is connected to the killer via her serving on the jury that sent him to Death Row.
"By the third reading at Famous Door," says McCullough, "I added the prayer segment (in which the cast recites a psalm for Jonas’ funeral in this realistic play’s one dream-like scene). In a way, it’s all their funerals, and I wanted to convey the sense of mourning for the loss of life—any life."
In addition to Chicago Dramatists, McCullough has workshopped her plays through the Women’s Theatre Alliance—a relationship she says put her in touch with professional actors and pushed her further along in the development process.
She has written ten plays, five screenplays, two teleplays and several pieces of short fiction. The playwright cites structure as her key area of growth. Early on, her plays took place in real time and were limited to three characters. Now she’s penning larger ensemble pieces that occasionally weave in and out of time. Her technological comedy, Cyber Serenade, was selected to be part of the 2000 Ashland New Plays Festival in Ashland, Oregon, and was produced this past summer at the Actor’s Theatre of Talent in Talent, Oregon. A Spot in the Shadows, which requires a large multiracial and multiethnic cast, is set in a Brooklyn tenement where various survivors of abuse bond and create their own empowering shelter.
Other works include a 10-minute plays Venus in the Morning; and three related one-acts: Everyone’s Afraid of the Dark; Black Night, White Stars; Enclosed Spaces: Darkness, Captivity, Suicide. The latter one-acts served as an experiment.
"I wanted to see if I could write a play set entirely in the dark," say McCullough, "one about people who don’t know where they are; and a comedy about suicide."
The challenge for her latest drama, Taking Care, is extending her characters—an elderly woman and her schizophrenic son—from the real people they are based on into the realm of theatre.
Sometimes an idea might gestate for a while, but a real story may never take shape. For instance, McCullough was struck by a news story about a Brinks truck crash in a poverty-stricken neighborhood. She explored the idea of a destitute community suddenly experiencing a huge amount of money falling into their hands. But she did not have enough for a full-length play.
The playwright also warns against researching a topic to death. "I let the research open new ideas for me," she says, "but I also have to determine how much information I need to include without it taking away from my characters and their stories. I usually don’t do research until I know my characters, because I don’t want technicalities to dictate who my characters are."
Since February, McCullough has been teaching creative writing at the Evanston Shelter for Battered Women.
"My hope is that the writing will encourage these women to help and serve as a support system for each other," the playwright envisions. "It means a lot when the women want to keep their notebooks—there’s more they have to say."
So McCullough’s belief in collaboration extends beyond her own personal writing process. She advises aspiring playwrights to "not be afraid to write badly—just push through those challenges to find your voice; and find a community of other writers."
She refers to her Chagrin Falls experience—via all the readings and the production at Stage Left—as an example of the benefits of not going it solo.
"I enjoy the collaboration that happens in theatre," McCullough reiterates. "Chagrin Falls isn’t just mine anymore—it’s ours."