The Billy Trilogy
“And then before White Buffalo sent Bessy on her journey he said one final thing to her. He said, remember, this is not a white-man journey; this is an Indian journey. Bessy asked, what does that mean? And White Buffalo replied…It means it probably will not end well.”
-from The Bad Man by Steven Cole Hughes
Steven Cole Hughes had no idea when he wrote 2005’s Slabtown that his love story about a gunslinger and a whore would spawn two more plays. “I don’t know when I first started to think of this thing as a trilogy. I know that when I first started writing Slabtown (ten years ago!) I felt like I had finally found my voice as a writer. After finishing Slabtown, and especially after seeing it produced, I knew I wanted to write another Western, and I liked Billy and Bessy so much as characters, that it seemed obvious to just write another play about them. Somewhere in the middle of writing Billy Hell I knew it had to be a trilogy. You can’t just have two – like PringlesTM.”
Considering that producing a new play is a highly risky venture for any theatre, and that the Western genre, defined on film by its sweeping vistas and wide open plains, is hardly easy to depict live on stage – it was encouraging that Slabtown and Billy Hell played to sold-out houses. Artistic Director (and director of all three plays in the trilogy), Maurice LaMee, explains: “This is an unusual occurrence for a new play, and even more unusual for two new plays. The trilogy has thus far struck a resonant chord, and audiences have been both entertained and moved by the love story of Bessy and Billy. I hope The Bad Man is a satisfying culmination of their mythic journey, and if it is, I hope we might one day produce the trilogy so it could be seen in one day.”
If someday, CRT audiences are treated to the entire trilogy in one day, they would be watching ten years of work in the span of about six hours. The trilogy, forged through a long and fruitful collaboration between Hughes, LaMee, and a posse of CRT artists, has an almost epic quality. “The arc of the story is important to me,” Hughes explains, “How do we get from Slabtown to Billy Hell to The Bad Man, or more importantly, why? The first two plays take place in 1877, which is the height of what we think of as the Wild West. The final play is set in 1890, which is the closing of the frontier, the last of the Indian wars, and the dawn of a new era. Billy and Bessy grow and change in each play – not always together, and not always at the same time, like a marriage.”
Just as the vaudevillian and dream-like Billy Hell was a stylistic departure from the more straightforward Slabtown, The Bad Man is also unique. For Hughes, each play in the trilogy should be able to stand on its own. “I started writing The Bad Man as Billy Hell was performing,” explains the author, “The story and the premise have always remained the same, but the plot and characters have changed more than any play I’ve ever written. It has been a long process, primarily I think, because of the character of The Indian. I’ve read so many books about the Plains Indians, I’ve watched every Western that has real Indians playing Indians, and I’ve been fortunate to talk with some Native Americans in South Dakota (thank you Emerson Elk of the Minneconjou), but it took me a long time to get comfortable(ish) writing dialogue for a Native American character.”
Challenges aside, Hughes revels in the language of the 19th century American West: “Newspaper articles are preposterous and racist and un-objective and hyperbolic about anything and everything. Any time the word ‘true!’ appears in the title of a book or an article or an advertisement in the Old West, you can be assured that what follows is most likely a lie.” It’s these idiosyncrasies that fuel his imagination. “I’m interested in the dichotomies of the Old West,” Hughes explains, “Gunfighters embody the clash of the Victorian Era and the Pioneer Era: they were essentially forging a new way of life out in the wild, while also being bound to Victorian mores like chivalry and fancy dress. In the case of the Plains Indians vs. the US Army, you have the Industrial Age clashing with the Stone Age.”
Though most theatres shy away from Westerns, for CRT, they’re essential. Maurice LaMee explains: “CRT is in a unique position, given its long history, its reputation and its professional artists, to produce plays that are responsive to this unique region of the country. In the coming years, we intend to play an even bigger role in incubating artists and plays that reflect the stories and culture of the Southwest through our new play development program called Headwaters.” It is his hope that the plays of The Billy Trilogy are just one (well, three) in a long line of new works that begin here, in what used to be the Old West. And that these plays continue onward, telling the stories of the West-to-come.
The Bad Man opens Friday, August 12 at 7:30pm, purchase tickets here!
