{"id":29023,"date":"2023-11-14T19:39:09","date_gmt":"2023-11-15T00:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=29023"},"modified":"2023-11-16T15:16:50","modified_gmt":"2023-11-16T20:16:50","slug":"the-making-of-a-playwright-cammi-stilwell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/the-making-of-a-playwright-cammi-stilwell\/","title":{"rendered":"The making of a playwright: Cammi Stilwell"},"content":{"rendered":"

Playwright Cammi Stilwell is still trying to get used to the idea that her worldwide debut happens in December. \u201cThis project has lived in my brain for two years. Seeing it live with actors and designers and a crew building things out, it\u2019s all very strange and doesn\u2019t feel quite real,\u201d said the 2020 Furman University theatre arts<\/a> graduate.<\/p>\n

\"poster

Stilwell’s “Odd” opens Dec. 1.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cOdd,\u201d debuts at The Warehouse Theatre<\/a> in Greenville, South Carolina. A modern-day redux of \u201cThe Odd Couple,\u201d the comedy portrays the chaos that ensues when polar opposites navigate life as best friends and roommates. \u201cIt\u2019s a love letter to my 20s,\u201d Stilwell said. \u201cI was 23 or 24 when I started writing this show, so it\u2019s taken up a nice little chunk of my mid-twenties.\u201d<\/p>\n

The chance to become a professional playwright at a young age isn\u2019t lost on her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very aware of how lucky I am that all this is happening,\u201d she said. \u201cI have people who are willing to work with me and create with me. I\u2019m just some 26-year-old with a laptop, and this is my very first show.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Columbia, South Carolina, native and offspring of a drama teacher, Stilwell had a voracious appetite for books as a youngster, a hunger that never abated. On occasion, her middle school math teacher had to wrench away whatever fiction she was engrossed in — \u201cThe Hunger Games,\u201d \u201cDivergent\u201d and other dystopian-themed books of the day. Carrie Fisher\u2019s \u201cThe Princess Diarist\u201d fueled Stilwell\u2019s penchant for journaling at age 19. Seven years later, she\u2019s on her 11th journal and counting.<\/p>\n

Understanding what makes a work entertaining is a skill Stilwell honed at Furman, where she received a steady diet of plays, and Pulitzer- and Tony-winning scripts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got to look at those from an actor\u2019s standpoint and figure out what makes it work for good storytelling and to see it from different perspectives,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that by studying all the different areas of theatre, students in our program can really see the broader view of the theatre industry,\u201d said Maegan Azar<\/a>, professor of acting and directing and chair of the Theatre Arts Department. \u201cPlaywrights have to be able to put all the pieces together \u2013 design, characterization, story arcs, form, style \u2013 and by studying all those aspects in lots of different classes and productions, Cammi got a keen sense of the big picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stilwell took a class from then visiting playwright Randall David Cook<\/a> \u201991, she wrote a student-led play \u201cMuse\u201d in 2019 and worked with playwright Kimberly Belflower<\/a> on \u201cJohn Proctor is the Villain\u201d as part of Furman\u2019s collaboration with New York\u2019s The Farm Theater<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"two

Cammi Stilwell (left) in “John Proctor is the Villain” by Kimberly Belflower.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI saw Cammi come alive on that trip,\u201d Azar said. \u201cShe ate up the opportunity to be in the room with a playwright like Kimberly who genuinely cared about listening to women and giving them voice in her plays. From that moment on, I could tell Cammi was going to keep writing.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in 2020, jobs evaporated, theaters and playhouses shuttered due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Stilwell bounced around doing random jobs, including a stint as a cast member at Walt Disney World in Orlando. That\u2019s when she received an email that changed everything.<\/p>\n

Mike Sablone<\/a>, friend and artistic director for The Warehouse Theatre, dusted off the script for \u201cMuse,\u201d which Stilwell had sent his way before COVID.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wrote something like, \u2018Hey, I forgot I had this. I had a lot of fun reading it – I\u2019d like to invest in your future,'” Stilwell recalled.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just the kind of thing I wanted to read,\u201d Sablone said. \u201cIt had heart, it had humor, it was theatrical, and, more importantly, it had a clear voice at the helm. I immediately wrote to Cammi and wanted to talk more about what her dreams and aspirations were as a writer.\u201d<\/p>\n

That exchange led to a commission from The Warehouse Theatre to write a bit for a 10-minute play festival held in June 2021. The star of the monologue was her close friend and fellow Furman alumna Clare Ruble \u201917.<\/p>\n

Shortly after the festival closed, Sablone urged Stilwell to keep sending him her work for feedback.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe sent me some pages from a play that was kicking around her head, and I told her I really liked what she had written,\u201d Sablone said. The two started toying with the idea of using \u201cThe Odd Couple\u201d as inspiration for a play starring Ruble and Furman alumna Kenzie Wynne \u201917. A couple of years and many iterations later, \u201cOdd\u201d was born.<\/p>\n

\u201cOdd\u201d runs December 1-17 and includes a cast and crew loaded with Furman graduates: Anna Bowman<\/a> \u201922, assistant stage manager; Caroline Jane Davis<\/a> \u201913, director; Kevin Frazier<\/a> \u201907, lighting and sound; and actors Ruble<\/a> and Wynne<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stilwell debuts her first professional play, “Odd,” at The Warehouse Theatre in downtown Greenville in December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":29065,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,61,41],"tags":[2400,2398,1032,2401,866,2399],"class_list":["post-29023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-the-furman-advantage","category-theatre-arts","tag-becoming-a-playwright","tag-comedy","tag-plays","tag-the-warehouse-theatre","tag-theatre","tag-writing-for-the-stage"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}