Spread the Love: Beauty and the Bee by Lindsay Price

This week on Spread the Love we talk about Beauty and the Bee by Lindsay Price.

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Transcript

Welcome to this week’s Spread the Love. This week we have a special guest, this is my sister Pam. Pam, how are you doing?

I’m great thanks, how are you?

I’m super as always. We’re sharing our love for our scripts! This week we are talking about one of our brand new scripts. It’s called Beauty and the Bee. I wrote it. Isn’t that great?

That’s awesome.

I know. The reason that Pam is here with us today is that Beauty and the Bee is all about sister conflicts. The two sisters in Beauty and the Bee, Cosette and Catherine are teenagers. They are very much at opposite ends of the spectrum. Catherine is the older sister and she is the ‘beauty,’ she is a cheerleader. Cosette is the geek, the nerd, the home-schooled spelling bee champion. And what happens is their worlds collide when Cosette decides that she wants to go to high school. She wants to be normal. And Catherine knows that Cosette is anything but normal. Now Pam, would say that we are pretty good friends right now?

Very good.

In our, cough, cough, late thirties.

Yes.

Did we get along in high school?

(laughing) No. Not at all.

Even a little bit?

Not so much.

No. Not so much. If you had said to me when I was seventeen that twenty-something years later that we would be sitting here, completely normal, completely having a conversation. I would have laughed you and you out of the world.

Absolutely!

See it can happen! See, if you’re in high school and you’re not getting along with your sister, things can change! Ok, Craig what do you love about Beauty and the Bee?

Well I love in the theatre how we’re able to theatricalize abstract concepts. In Beauty and the Bee the two sister’s heads are so full and so filled of conflict that their heads are buzzing. And Lindsay personifies the buzzing as living, breathing, speaking bees.

Life sized!

Life sized bees who actually talk Catherine and Cosette through their trouble. It’s great theatre, great characters, and it’s great for student performers. Lindsay what do you love about Beauty and the Bee?

Well, Beauty and the Bee has been a long journey for me. It started out as a short ten minute play with just a couple of characters that actually won a competition. I was so happy about it I tried to turn it into a full length. Craig did that succeed as a full length?

Your high school relationship with your sister was stronger.

It did not happen as a full length. However, it is a smashing one act play. I’m so happy with this play, I’m so in love with it. And aside from the bees, the life sized talking bees which I think are fantastic, the characters of Cosette and Catherine (and they also have a brother named Julian), the three siblings are really human, and they’re really, they’res o three dimensional. And to me that’s the most amazing thing about a play when you can take people that exist merely on the page and make them life like? I think these three people exist somewhere and I I love that. And I love that I’m able to present that in a play and I love seeing them come to life. That’s the most amazing thing to me to write life sized, life sized, and life like, three dimensional characters. So, that’s it for Spread the Love. Pam you’re behind the camera, say hello!

Hello!

She can’t see you, she’s waving but you can’t see her. That’s it!

Buzz, buzz! Buzz, buzz!