FIVE PLAYS THAT MADE KATE KATE - BY KATE BECKLEY

When I was provided prompts for this blog post, one felt very much in my wheelhouse. I was asked to reflect on the process for Elephant's Graveyard as the stage manager.

Option 2 felt much more vulnerable and personal.

I immediately decided to go with my wheelhouse. That is, until I hit a writer's block and found myself writing the second prompt just to get some words flowing. So, enjoy (and hold your judgment) my top five favorite plays, and why they’re my favorites.

To be honest, I’ve changed the prompt a little. (I’ve never been great at picking favorites.) Instead, here are five plays that made me the artist I am today. Some of them I saw beautiful productions of and others, when I read them, spoke to me in ways that were deeply impactful.

In no particular order, these are the five shows that make Kate, Kate (or at least who she is at this specific moment): 

Fleabag by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. I first experienced this play in college. All I knew was that it was just Phoebe Waller-Bridge and a chair. However, there was nothing “just” about the play. In the most hilarious, dramatic, and engaging ways, this play feels like spending an hour and twenty minutes catching up with your friend who always has the most ridiculous stories. The storytelling goes from Fleabag bringing everyone in on the joke, to being so intimate that she could only be seeing and speaking to you. When I first saw the play, and anytime I go back to the script now, it reminds me that it’s okay to be wherever I am in life. Life is messy and ridiculous, lonely and difficult, wonderful and hopeful—and the ever-changing-ness of all that, kind of makes it amazing. No matter what part of it you’re in. 

Peter and the Starcatcher by Rick Elice. I had a big imagination as a kid. I loved playing pretend, dressing up, and going on all the adventures my mind could come up with. This play carries the essence of what I loved about imagination as a kid and transforms it into a beautiful story and art form that I cherish as an adult. It echoes the way we used resources we had as kids. Sticks were our swords and our bikes, the trusty steeds. By asking the audience early on to come along into the world by “supposing all these planks and ropes are now the British Empire” or by “flying” via the clearly visible ensemble support, the audience is invited to pretend along with the actors. Watching, reading, and working on productions of this show will always be the closest I get to my childhood imagination and the adventures that awaited me there. 

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare. This might be the first play I ever read. I'm not sure how much of it I understood on that first pass, but since then, it’s popped back into my life whenever I could use a little whimsy. At its core, that’s what this play is to me: whimsy. It’s a comedic story of happenstance with interfering fairies, magic, and a happy ending that allows for creativity from the company producing it. A recent favorite was the 2019 production at Bridge Theatre. 

All the Emilies in All the Universes by Ian August. Grief and how we deal with it is so personal, and sometimes a single person deals with it in a million ways. When I first read this play, I wasn’t exactly grieving or in a similar situation to the protagonist, but there were things in my life that were drastically changing. I would find myself mourning the loss of what had been and what could have been. In quiet ways, this play met me at that time and just sat with me. And in a beautifully haunting way, has lingered with me since.  

Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl. I love Greek mythology and retellings of it. I’ve never seen Eurydice, but this script’s take on the myth has always spun a million different variations of what I would want to try with a production. From the unique creativity of the underworld, the memories of people we have lost, and what happens to us in the afterlife, this script has had me creating productions in my head for years. It lives on the list of shows I would like to work on. 

So, I’m working with a word count that I’ve slightly exceeded. I will keep it to this list of five. Just know that these are the shows of Kate today. Ask me again tomorrow, and you may get a completely different answer.