Erin Kirkpatrick is directing a production of Sam Shepherd’s play Cowboy Mouth for her senior project. HJT blogger, Anthony Reale sat down with her to talk about preparing for the production.
AR: Did anything stand out as a challenge for Cowboy Mouth?
EK: One of the most exciting challenges of Cowboy Mouth is the live music. I cast Ian knowing that he wasn’t coming in to the project with any experience on guitar or drums. The wonderful Aiyana Mehta worked with Ian for several weeks teaching guitar and bringing the songs on the page to life. Getting the right collaborators in the room was key to solving this challenge.
AR: Was this show like anything you’ve ever directed before?
EK: This show is similar to other plays that I have directed in that it focuses on a single relationship between two characters. It’s different in the explosive and dangerous energy in the relationship and how the way the characters feel towards the other can turn on a dime. Cowboy Mouth also straddles realism and the abstract in a way that is totally different from anything I have directed before.
AR: What was it like to transform this work from the page to the stage?
Tara McCulloch holds a gun to maintain control in one of the scenes in Cowboy Mouth.
EK: In some ways crafting an image was difficult and in other ways not so much. The process started back in September when I first started having conversations with my design team. I wanted the characters to feel trapped in a cage, like they are coiled springs that release all their pent-up energy and then are coiled up again. In the story before the play starts, Cavale kidnaps Slim and keeps him in this room to turn him into a rock and roll star. I wanted Slim’s costume to show him starting to belong to her world, but still retaining elements of his life from before. I love how the set design reminds me of some of the off-campus houses around Whitman that have been in student hands for man many years, and the mess and grime and hobbled-together feeling.
