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Business major and playwright Erin McHugh gets to the point
in her one-act plays. Steve Morse photo
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No
Business Like Show Business
By Scott Spilky
In Erin McHugh’s one-act play, Film
Exposure, a photographer tries to get a quarreling family
to sit still, ignorant of the fact that before him is a portrait
of a failed marriage.
“They’re the quintessential American family,”
McHugh says, “but they’re not. You have to see beyond
that.”
McHugh, a senior in business
marketing from St. Louis, had to see beyond her own field
of knowledge to explore playwriting. Having never taken a course
on the subject, McHugh enrolled in a beginning playwriting
course at MU as a junior. In the class, she learned about the
importance of making each word count, especially in one-act plays,
which she prefers to write.
Two of McHugh’s plays, Film Exposure
and Road Side, were chosen for Mizzou’s New Play
Series. In the series, the Department
of Theatre chooses the best plays from local playwrights to
be read aloud by actors.
McHugh initially found it difficult to be
the lone business major in a class of theater students. But the
instructor, Kate Berneking Kogut, BA ’88, MA ’02,
encouraged her to continue writing. In her senior year, McHugh
took an intermediate playwriting course with Heather Carver, assistant
professor of playwriting. Encouraged by Carver, McHugh, who had
written Film Exposure for the class, entered the play
in the American College Theatre Festival.
Judges selected Film Exposure as
one of the national finalists at the January 2004 competition
in Denver. Another play by an MU undergraduate, Matt Newlin, also
was selected as a finalist. Although neither McHugh nor Newlin
won this year’s top prize in the festival — a performance
of their play at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. —
McHugh is not discouraged.
“Both Matt’s play and my play
were received well at the conference, and a faculty member from
Meramec Community College in St. Louis asked if he can produce
both of them next fall,” she says.
Another short play by McHugh, Road Side,
was one of five student plays presented in “The Ugly Tree
and Other One Acts.” As part of this series, which produces
student work under the direction of MU theater professors, Road
Side was performed in February. During rehearsals, McHugh
was on hand to give input to the actors and director.
In the play, an older couple is walking on
opposite sides of the road, engaged in a humorous exchange about
the fact that they have never been married. The play ends with
a twist as the man proposes to the woman.
There is no twist for McHugh’s own story;
she plans to pursue a career in marketing, but she’ll also
keep writing one-act plays.
“I don’t write big Broadway plays,”
she says. “I write to-the-point life stories that, if published,
can be performed in classrooms or small theaters.
Note: This story was published originally
in the summer 2004 issue of MIZZOU, the magazine of the MU Alumni
Association.
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Last Update:
November 15, 2007
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