Retrospect(ive): Gatton

What was your first CP year?

Pretty sure it was 2008. I had been in the audience for a Cherry Picking or two before then, and finally jumped in as an actor. My very first piece was a trial by fire: a play consisting of long monologues as a grizzled old Mexican migrant worker. I learned early the CP philosophy of “just leap and see what happens”. 

Who brought you into the CP family/ How did you get involved?

I believe it was Nicole Golden specifically, but broadly speaking she, Tamara Reynolds, and Kevin Jones were the triumvirate that sucked me in. We had all met acting in Paul Rudnick’s The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told in 2002, and that cast bonded in an unusual way. We found in each other fellow travelers in a special groove, so where they went I was happy to follow. 

What has been the most memorable CP play you have seen or worked on and why? 

Without question it would be William Norman’s SPENCER, OR NOT. That year’s theme was “decision points“, and writers were each given an anonymous story about a decision point in someone’s life, solicited from the greater Cherry Picking family. William was given my story, about the many decision moments that led to a longtime-estranged friend/ex becoming my husband. He created a stunning, epic, choose-your-own adventure audience-participation extravaganza that contained multiple endings involving “my” character getting dragged to death by a subway train or eaten by housecats. It was glorious. Nicole Golden played “me”(William hadn’t known whose story it was and wrote that character as a woman), and I got to narrate, guiding the audience through this adventure. It slayed. And my husband, having no idea, was in the audience, watching and having it slowly dawn on him, “wow, this is all weirdly familiar....” It was epic and hilarious and joyous and personally very moving. I treasure that memory.

So you win the cherry pie, who are you sharing it with? 

I would say the aforementioned spouse, but he doesn’t dig fruit pies. So I’d eat it all myself, withOut hesitation or apology. 

CP gives me the courage to…

Write. I’m now a playwright as well as an actor, and I got the courage to start at Cherry Picking. The first play I ever had in CP went on to be a finalist for a National Short Playwriting Award and took me to a playwrights’ conference in Miami, where I started to feel like I maybe did have something to say worth listening to. Another short written originally for CP won the Samuel French OOB Festival and is now published by Sam French. Three full-lengths and a lot of shorts later, I may not be the most famous or widely produced writer in the world, but I am a writer — and I owe the start of that to Cherry Picking. 

What have you learned during quarantine that you’d like to carry with you in the future? 

I can afford to get fewer haircuts. People apparently like my overgrown quarantine hair way more than I do.