Kathy Ng on What Led Her to Write Beautiful Princess Disorder

As budding playwrights go, Kathy Ng got off to something of a late start. “I didn’t do any theater until I got to Brown [University as an undergrad],” says the author of Beautiful Princess Disorder now on stage at Catastrophic Theatre.

Surrounded by what she describes as “a robust theater landscape,” Ng says she got pulled in rapidly, despite being nervous about directing and acting. “I fell in love with being part of a greater machine trying to make something together with a whole group of people.”

Ultimately that led to playwriting and resulted in her play with three characters: Triangle Person, Mother Theresa and a killer whale called Tilikum, also known as Tilly. Initially designed as a one-person play, it was presented as a reading during her grad school years which she continued at Brown. Ng also performed a solo version of it last summer.

Triangle Person was based on a childhood doodle that as Ng said, “stuck around with me.”

“It is actually possible to do the show as one person but when Catastrophic wanted to do the show, I kind of rewrote it for three people. The show is very dependent upon your relationship with the audience. There’s lot of call-and-response. The play is constructed through a series of confessional monologues.”

Her mentor at Brown had sent a couple of her plays to Jason Nodler, Founding Artistic Director at Catastrophic, who reached out to her. In terms of play scheduling, the process that followed was fairly speedy, she said. She heard from Nodler at the beginning of this year and he said he wanted to put the play in this season. “Which meant I had to get to working.”

The main character is essentially playing a shape, she said. “I would describe Triangle Person as essentially geometric and intense and a little bit otherworldly.”

“Mother Theresa is definitely my version of her. I wanted to get to know her beyond her public persona. I think in this version she’s a little grumpy but really also extremely loving and very much dissatisfied but still trying not to complain.

“Tilly, the killer whale: sweet, dangerous, with a big heart,” she said.

“They’re all waiting to be processed by God.”

She hopes that after seeing the play, audience members “come out feeling like they want to be softer, gentler to maybe parts of them they don’t like or find confusing or have wanted to repress or have caused them shame in the past. I hope they’re able to give a little more space to those parts of themselves.

“I think this play is especially for people who have experiences with borderline personality disorder either themselves or with their loved ones. I encourage them to come. I hope it surprises and delights them.”