{"id":9862,"date":"2012-04-03T11:28:06","date_gmt":"2012-04-03T18:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=9862"},"modified":"2022-05-11T10:54:40","modified_gmt":"2022-05-11T16:54:40","slug":"kathleen-cahill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/kathleen-cahill\/","title":{"rendered":"The Evolution of Kathleen Cahill\u2019s Course 86B"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kathleen Cahill directs the cast of her play Course 86B in a reading, photo by Gerry Johnson<\/p><\/div>\n

The theatre lights dim and the stage transforms into a world where the audience forgets actors, costumes, and lighting. Transfixed onlookers are given a reprieve from their daily lives as captivating characters quickly become familiar friends. Plot seems to vanish as seamless storytelling weaves scenes that are more experienced than watched. When the lights come up, the room erupts with enthusiastic applause and lively conversation about the spellbinding play accompanies people on the walk to their cars. When live theatre is done well, it has no equal for its ability to enchant and intrigue an audience.<\/span><\/p>\n

To a theatre-goer, a play is a diversion that happens over the course of an afternoon or an evening. But the amount of work invested by the playwright in crafting that experience can take months or even years.<\/p>\n

On April 11, Kathleen Cahill, resident playwright for Salt Lake Acting Company (SLAC), will debut her latest work \u201cCourse 86B in the Catalogue.\u201d It\u2019s a project that began to take shape in 2009 and has been worked on intermittently for approximately 3 years. A trip to the desert landscape of Boulder, Utah planted the seed of inspiration that has grown into the piece that SLAC\u2019s website describes as, \u201ca comedic riff on evolution set in a small community college in an arid state where extraordinary artifacts from the ancient past abound \u2013 some of them still living.\u201d<\/p>\n

On her trip to Boulder, Cahill was struck by the abundance of relics from the ancient past. \u201cUtah is really an archaeological dream land, a treasure trove of prehistory. Our guide told me about prehistoric plants on mesa tops that you can\u2019t get to except by helicopter and he showed me dinosaur prints. It was just blowing my mind,\u201d she says. This sense of wonder ignited ideas that became part of her play. \u201cIt came out of enthusiasm for being in a state where there are more prehistoric remains than almost anywhere else. That is so mysterious and unique.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Kathleen Cahill directs the cast of her play Course 86B in a reading, photo by Gerry Johnson<\/p><\/div>\n

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Kathleen Cahill directs the cast of her play Course 86B in a reading, photo by Gerry Johnson<\/p><\/div>\n

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Kathleen Cahill directs the cast of her play Course 86B in a reading, photo by Gerry Johnson<\/p><\/div>\n

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Utah residents can take for granted that their state is home to rare paleontological resources and archeological artifacts. Locals can drive for a few hours and find themselves looking at rock art in Nine Mile Canyon, which has been called \u201cthe world\u2019s longest art gallery.\u201d It\u2019s not uncommon to hear about the discovery of new dinosaur bones, and people can walk alongside dinosaur tracks, footprints left behind by creatures that haven\u2019t walked the Earth for 65 million years.<\/p>\n

Southern Utah can give a person a different sense of time because it allows one to visit dinosaur tracks and petroglyphs over the course of a day even though neither of these things existed at the same time in history. Considering this time warp Cahill started crafting a play set in an otherworldly wilderness where characters from different time periods live in the same peculiar place.<\/p>\n

The work slowly evolved as Cahill wrote pieces of it on and off over the next two years. Her experiences in Boulder were finally translated to paper and turned over to the hands of actors. In February 2011 the first public reading of \u201cCourse 86B in the Catalogue\u201d was held through SLAC\u2019s\u00a0New Play Sounding Series.<\/em>\u00a0Its opening introduced Stevie, a teacher at Delta Community College who has left her husband and retreated to the desert. She is a paleontologist teaching the \u201cHistory of Life on Earth,\u201d also known as Course 86B in the catalogue. The audience journeys with Stevie as she begins to realize the nature of her new town. Dell, Stevie\u2019s student, has an uncanny ability to draw renderings of ancient life and possesses a robust familiarity with the Holy Bible. Dell\u2019s boyfriend Sterling may evolve to be human one day, but he isn\u2019t there just yet. To top it all off Stevie\u2019s estranged husband Bill has lost his job in the financial sector, moved to the desert, and taken up residence in a chicken coop not far from Stevie\u2019s house. The reading elicited frequent laughter and loud applause at the end.<\/p>\n

After the reading, Cahill invited feedback and questions from her audience. Some were confused by Dell, saying it wasn\u2019t clear if the character was from another time or if she was simply a country bumpkin. Sterling also presented a problem for some people because he was thunderously loud and too primitive. The majority of audience members had positive feedback and one young man noted, \u201cThe play is hysterical, and it\u2019s unbelievable for such a young work.\u201d
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\nReflecting on the first reading Cahill says, \u201cThe characters were very much in their infancy.\u201d They grew considerably over the next year. Through a handful of private readings and a workshop, Cahill helped her characters mature. Dell survived her \u201cadolescence\u201d and emerged as a confident woman who is proudly from the 19th century. Cahill worked to characterize Dell through the language she uses and her timid approach to modern technology.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sterling is still loud, but endearingly so. He clearly wants to be human and strives to be one of the guys. He even likes football. Cahill compares him to an adolescent boy, in part because just as boys are not yet men, Sterling is not yet a Homo Sapien.<\/p>\n

Bill\u2019s motives for following Stevie to the ends of the Earth are clearer, but to say what they are would give too much away. His story arc has been fleshed out and Cahill reveals that some of Bill\u2019s character was inspired by the economic meltdown. \u201cPeople were losing their jobs right, left, and center. And I thought, what happens to that guy from the financial industry? The idea is that he\u2019s out there in the wilderness, in this wild place and he starts to become more genuine. More human.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stevie also changed. She has literally grown up. \u201cI initially had her as a young PhD student and this was her first job,\u201d Cahill says. Cheryl Gaysunas, who was seen in Cahill\u2019s play \u201cCharm,\u201d read the part of Stevie and commented that she felt older than she was written. Cahill took note and made Stevie a more mature woman.<\/p>\n

The characters have changed and the ending has undergone quite a bit of work. Plotlines have been expanded, written and rewritten. For Cahill that\u2019s part of the process of writing a play. \u201cIt\u2019s an odd thing. If you build a piece of furniture, you work on it until it\u2019s done. But with a play or a novel and these kinds of things you\u2019re making something out of nothing. It\u2019s vague, amorphous, and ephemeral. You can put in a lot of time, but it\u2019s not good time. I\u2019ve ended up not liking tons of what I\u2019ve written and thrown it away and just saved one page. It\u2019s this constant shaping, thinking. It\u2019s a messy process. And it\u2019s hard to say when you\u2019re done. At least for me. It\u2019s so gummy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Playwright Kathleen Cahill, photo by Gerry Johnson<\/p><\/div>\n

Gummy might be a word used to describe an idea that just emerged from the primordial ooze. At some point the idea evolves and takes shape. In Cahill\u2019s case her most compelling ideas transform into plays. \u201cAs you travel through life some things stick to you and some things don\u2019t. And there are things that stick to me because of who I am, and out of that comes my work. Someone else would go on that trip to Southern Utah and not have the same reaction. It\u2019s a mixture of me and it. It\u2019s the dancer and the dance. In this case it\u2019s me and the experience that I had passing through me,\u201d Cahill says.<\/p>\n

From April 11 to May 6 audiences can settle in to their seats at\u00a0SLAC<\/a>, watch the lights dim, and experience the latest story woven by Cahill. While she was in Boulder, Cahill came across Paul Winder’s photographs of petroglyphs. They complement the theme of her play and will be on display in SLAC\u2019s green room during the run of her show.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The theatre lights dim and the stage transforms into a world where the audience forgets actors, costumes, and lighting. Transfixed onlookers are given a reprieve from their daily lives as captivating characters quickly become familiar friends. Plot seems to vanish as seamless storytelling weaves scenes that are more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1533,"featured_media":9883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[859,860],"class_list":["post-9862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-theatre","tag-kathleen-cahill","tag-salt-lake-acting-company"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/kathleencahill.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 10:47:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1533"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9862"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63399,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9862\/revisions\/63399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}