Tom: So, I’m sitting here with Lucy Bredeson-Smith who is playing the role of Gwen in convergence-continuum’s upcoming production of Jordan Harrison’s Finn in the Underworld.  Lucy, can you tell me a little bit about what this play is about?

Lucy: Well, it’s creepier than hell. (Laughs) It’s what maybe happens with a lot of families in a more esoteric way? The layers upon layers upon layers of history in a family and how it scars or builds the people in the family.

Tom: Jordan Harrison describes this play as a psychosexual gothic horror story. Why does he describe it that way?  Or, why do you think he describes it that way?

Lucy: Well, that’s what it is. Plain and simple, that’s what it is.  If you can make this thing plain and simple.  Because of what happens in the fallout shelter, because it’s creepy, because it’s a Halloween kind of play.  I don’t know how else to answer that.

Tom: When I think of gothic horror, I think of something like Jane Eyre.

Lucy: Well, it has its dramatic turns and they are hyper-dramatic.  But it’s not like watching a Turner Classic or something like that.  Psychosexual certainly because it’s psychological…but it also deals with the sexual pieces as well.

Tom: So, how is this a convergence play? You’ve been in what, hundreds of them?

Lucy: (Laughs) Yes, hundreds… I’ve been doing shows here for almost seven years now.

Tom: And this is also the second Jordan Harrison play that you’ve been in.

Lucy: Correct.

Tom: Act a Lady as well.

Lucy: Correct.

Tom: Not only, how is this a convergence play, but how does this relate to your previous experience doing a Harrison play?

Lucy: It’s a convergence play because it’s dark, because it’s intense, because it is immediate, because it has fractured time, because it bounds right over top of…it tramples the fourth wall.  Because it brings its subjects into very close proximity with the audience, and it plays with the audience: the audience becomes part of it…the audience becomes a part of this old house, too…just like we do.  As far as its relationship to Act a Lady, it doesn’t seem to have any.  It’s so different. Act a Lady was playful and fun, and yes, it dealt with identity and who are you at any given moment and how much of you is a reflection of the people who’ve gone before you and the people who’ve fed into your psyche.  But this one doesn’t have the playfulness.  This one is definitely a horror flick.  It’s so scary; I have nightmares from it.

Tom: Now, you play the character of Gwen.  And Gwen as a tense relationship with her sister, Rhoda. Can you talk a little about that?  About their relationship?

Lucy: Yeah… Rhoda’s a bitch. (Laughs) She is… She tortured me when I was a kid! I mean, where else can you look for the tension?  Yeah, Rhoda is the dominant one and was when we were children. And Gwen was the troubled one.  She’s the one who saw ghosts and stuff and heard voices in her head and was treated like a lunatic all her life.  And in a desperate attempt to become a normal person, she married Phillip, who is this drippy guy who likes real estate, and she is the one who…to the outside world would look normal.  Whereas Rhoda has settled for a solitary life and looks after mom and all that kind of stuff. And the tension now comes partially from the fact that Rhoda is resentful of the fact that she has to look after mom and devote her life to mom, but also because Gwen now has this quasi-normal life. Rhoda feels some resentfulness for that. Gwen has always resented Rhoda for Rhoda’s top of the dean’s list, for Rhoda’s being the prim-and-proper, the favored one in the family. So, even though Gwen was probably pampered as a kid because she’s the baby, she didn’t quite make the splash that Rhoda did with her parents because she was troubled.

Tom: Okay, great. Thank you.

Lucy: Thank you.