BWW Interviews: Cathal Gallagher Talks Career, Writing Process, and MALCOLM AND TERESA

A.D. Players is currently presenting the Regional Premiere of Cathal (pronounced Cal) Gallagher's riveting drama MALCOLM AND TERESA. The Play chronicles the life of Malcolm Gallagher and his BBC interviews of Mother Teresa, which helped make her a known and popular person worldwide. Before attending the show on Saturday, May 25, I got to chat with Cathal Gallagher, and he discussed his career, writing process, and MALCOLM AND TERESA.

Me: How did you get started writing?

Catahl Gallagher: Initially, I just read a story about a famous cardinal from Hungary named Mindszenty. I thought, "Jeepers! This is a great story but there's not a movie or play about it." I had been reading some books on writing plays, so I thought, "Why don't I take a stab at writing a play?" And I did. I was part of the Playwrighting Center in San Francisco, where readers read the play, and then my fellow playwrights critiqued it, and said it was terrible. So, that was my introduction to playwrighting.

Me: What was your inspiration for writing MALCOLM AND TERESA?

Cathal Gallagher: MALCOLM AND TERESA came along much later, but I was watching a television program and saw Malcolm Muggeridge, an Englishman, being interviewed. He was talking about his earlier life, in which he was a reporter for the Manchester Guardian. He went to Russia and discovered a famine in Ukraine, wrote about it, and was ostracized for it. So, you know, I then decided to pick up a biography of him. I went to the library and read everything I could on Malcolm Muggeridge, and said, "That's funny. I've never heard of this guy. This is a great story. One man against the world because his journalist friends leave him and even members of his own family didn't believe what he had written about the famine in Ukraine." So, in the play that creates a unique conflict, and that was the genesis of this one.

Me: In addition to the Muggeridge biography, what other research did you do for the play?

Cathal Gallagher: I did some online, but I also wrote to the Muggeridge family to get their approval. He had a niece in England, and she sent me some magazines and stuff. I also wrote to Wheaton College, Illinois where they store his papers and to the BBC to get Muggeridge's interview with Mother Teresa.

Me: You got stuff from all over.

Cathal Gallagher: Well, I decided I'd include the interviews with Mother Teresa. She was a major influence in his life. The BBC did have them in their archives. They were recorded in 1968. I paid them a fee, and they sent me the interviews.

Me: What was your writing process like for this play?

Cathal Gallagher: For this play, and really any others, what I do is go through the biographies and et cetera. I look for the conflicts in the person's life, and then look for a major conflict. Obviously, you have a protagonist and you need an antagonist. In Muggeridge's case, of course, the antagonists were widespread. It just wasn't individuals. It was a state, a movement, a way of life. So, I looked for those, and I did find conflict. Was there ever conflict! I jotted those down. Then, I write things out in free hand. After that, I type them up. It took about maybe six months before I got the first draft finished.

Me: You've written about 10 other plays. Was there anything different in the process for MALCOLM AND TERESA compared to your other plays?

Cathal Gallagher: I also had to do some research on Teresa. Not that she was an antagonist, but she was certainly a major influence in the play. So, it was different in that respect. I did one about a man named Franz Jägerstätter, who refused to join the Nazi army in World War II. He was the protagonist, and the Nazi state was the antagonist. That was different, only in that sense, in only that Muggeridge had an ally in Mother Teresa that Jägerstätter didn't have.

Me: As Quo Vadis Theatre Company in San Jose, California prepared the World Premiere production of MALCOLM AND TERESA, did you make edits or do any rewriting?

Cathal Gallagher: Yeah, and it's fairly standard procedure for me. When they're doing the play, usually after the rehearsals are done, they go off-book, and do the first run-through without the scripts, then I'll make a few changes here and there. But, I work with the directors. It's kind of a collaboration. Sometimes the directors have better ideas than I have. So, yes there are changes that are made as we go along. And even now, after this run at A.D.Players, there's likely to be a few changes here and there.

Me: That was my next question. Is MALCOLM AND TERESA a finalized work or are you still tinkering with it a little bit?

Cathal Gallagher: It's a finalized work, right now. This is going to be the basic play wherever it goes, but I tweak it now and then. Change a line here and there. Drop a line here and there. It's not in published form yet. It's not out in the stores, but it's about 95% set.

Me: What do you hope audiences take away from MALCOLM AND TERESA?

Cathal Gallagher: Muggeridge, to me, was one of the most remarkable journalists, if not men, of the 20th century. I want audiences to take away a good night of theatre, but I'd like them to just get to know this man. Someone who writes and reports about a famine in Ukraine-that was a dreadful famine in my opinion and underreported. Ukrainians in California were happy to see that somebody had written a play about it. So, I'd like people to know that this terrible event took place and that one journalist stood out just about all by himself and said, "Hey, this is what's going on," while other journalists remained silent and didn't want to report it because it went against their ideology. So, he was a man that went after the truth even though he was a committed socialist himself at the time, and I'm sure that it bothered him that all of this was going on, that his own people-the dictatorship of the working class-allowed this to go on. I'm sure it bothered him to write it and to see that, but he just reported what he saw and was ostracized for doing it. So, it's a remarkable story about a remarkable man, and hopefully a remarkable play. But, it wouldn't be proper of me to say that.

Me: What should Houston audiences be aware of when they enter MALCOLM AND TERESA?

Cathal Gallagher: I think what is fascinating about Malcolm Muggeridge's life, and the question that his life and hopefully the question the play raises is whether or not you can build a just society on human values alone, apart from God or any external moral standard. Can you build a good society or a decent society just based on human values, where all good people get together? I think that's the subtext of the play. Obviously, I'm not going to answer that. People will have to go to the A.D. Players and see how that might come out. That is the theme that runs through the play.

Me: What advice do you offer to others who want to pursue playwriting?

Cathal Gallagher: I would say, if you can, take a course in playwrighting, but, at a minimum, study all the books on playwrighting-the how-to books. I write biographies, and, for the mast part, I have to do an awful lot of research and make sure that the person I'm putting on stage actually had these events happen to him or her. You can't make stuff up. You can make the dialogue up.

I would recommend if it's non-bios that you write about conflict. Don't search for conflict in the play, before you're characters come on, make sure that there is conflict existing by the mere positions that they hold. For instance, if it is a boy versus girl or a boy meets girl and the woman is a strong environmentalist and the guy works for an oil company, then you have conflict even before the play begins, rather than trying to seek it as it goes along. So, that's one piece of advice I'd have for them. You have to have that conflict otherwise you can't have a good play.

So, do your research, take a course if you can, get some how-to books, and then look for conflict in your characters.

MALCOM AND TERESA runs on the A.D. Players' Grace Stage through June 23, 2013. For more information and tickets, visit www.adplayers.org or call (713) 526 - 2721.

Photo courtesy of Quo Vadis Theatre Company.