Hey y’all! Who is getting excited for the Seabury Quinn Playfest this April!! Next up interview series is one of everyone’s favorite OU First year Playwrights, Catherine Weingarten! Catherine has become well known in the playwriting program for her girly madnesses, her odd female characters and of course her love for theater that includes making out! Read my full interview with her below and learn more about her and her awesome new play that will be featured in the Seabury Quinn, Karate Hottie.
If your play was a karate move, What would it be and why?
(kicks interviewer in chest) That’s a demonstration!! So yeah, I think it would be a direct kick to the chest cause my writing style is a bit “in your face” and my play will probably take you to a darker place than you wanted to go and it might hurt after, but then you’ll reflect and be like…woahh that chick kicked me in the chest and maybe it was kinda hot.
What brought you into the idea of karate in your play and how does it form the play?
Well the initial inspiration for the play came from a friend engaged in another kinda obscure sport who got into a weird kinda complicated relationship with an older man. I personally did karate as a kid with my sister and I was not too bad. I got a yellow belt! So thought if I was gunna try to write about a sport, why not write about one I pursued in my childhood.
I guess one of the other things that drew me to karate was the idea that it was combat, but highly choreographed and kind of like a dance and almost seemed like it was so choreographed you couldn’t get hurt. But at any time you really could really actually hurt a person and send someone to the hospital. So I liked that “fake out” aspect of it, like oh a karate studio is a safe environment to fight, but at the same time you are fighting.
You are known for your onomatopoeia and use of emoticons in your work, what does that achieve for you?
Hmmmmm….well as a millennial chick, I am obsessed with awkward rythms, emoticons, and saying “like” a lot. I like capturing how we really talk right now, how young people sound so odd and can’t really talk and how interesting inarticulateness really is. Also who can resist an emoticon in a play, I think no one!
From a young age I have always had my own wacked relationship to language. People will say to me, “Catherine, what are you saying.” And then maybe I’ll cry or something. But that’s one of the reasons I think playwriting is perfect for me, because I need my own space to explore my own weird view of the world and the ways we communicate with each other or think we are communicating.
Tell me a secret 😉
When I was a kid I had issues with slutty Halloween costumes. I went a Quaker school and I think they wanted us to dress us as friendly things like Ketchup bottles and Jesus, but I chose such “winning costumes” as: French maid and pink devil teen.
You’ve read about and now fallen in love with and are obsessed with Catherine! Now Come check out the reading for her play “Karate Hottie” at the 21st Annual Seabury Quinn PlayFest: Thursday April 23rd at 1pm in Baker Theater!
Here is the blurb for it:
When 16-year-old, Dart fell in love with her sexy, manly 37-year-old karate instructor she didn’t know she would engage in something that promises to be way more complicated and way more wrong and way more HOT than she ever thought it could be 😉
More about Catherine:
Catherine Weingarten hails from Ardmore, PA also known as the area that inspired the preppy sexy TV show “Pretty Little Liars.” Catherine’s comedic plays delve into the societal pressure placed on young women to be both impossibly good looking as well as ridiculously intellectual, humble, kind as can be but sexy. Her plays usually include some hot fantasy sequences which helps attract the common man into the theater! She recently graduated from Bennington College in Vermont where she studied playwriting(with Sherry Kramer) as well as gender, mediation and environmental studies. Her short plays have been done at such theaters as Ugly Rhino Productions, Fresh Ground Pepper, Wishbone Theater Collective and Nylon Fusion Collective. She is currently the playwright in residence for “Realize Your Beauty Inc” which promotes positive body image for kids by way of theater arts. Catherine is thrilled to pursue her MFA at OU and thankful for the awesome opportunity for baller mentorship. catherine-weingarten.squarespace.com
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