The Wurl of Theatre
By Cheryl Anderson Brown

Karen Wurl resisted going to college for a long time. Then she got defensive about feeling uneducated. During one period of unemployment, she decided "well, why not?" and enrolled in the college down the street. Fortunately for all parties, her neighborhood college was Kennesaw State University.

"Everything in my life was so complicated," says Wurl, a single mother of three daughters. "It just seemed easier to enroll full time."

If Wurl thought she was simplifying her life, she could not have been more mistaken. At KSU, she rediscovered her interests as a playwright and a poet, and she has more recently discovered an interest in teaching. A typical week in her life now includes working in a writing lab, acting as a dramaturg, writing plays and poems, organizing poetry events, publicly reading her poems, teaching at KSU, and thinking about doctoral studies.

For someone who never intended to go to college, Wurl has become especially involved in education. Not only did she complete a theatre degree in 2001, she also graduated from Kennesaw State's master of arts in professional writing program in 2004 and, in spring semester 2005, taught a class in the Department of Theatre & Performance Studies.

She also has gained important recognition for her skills as a playwright. Although she first started writing plays when she was nine, Wurl didn't think it was a career option. She did consider becoming a writer as a young adult but gave it up when she realized she wasn't going to be able to sell enough stories to The New Yorker and The Atlantic to make a living.

Going back to college, however, provided her the tools and skills to return to her love of writing and pursue it as a career. She has now written about 10 plays, although she admits it's hard to tell when a play is complete.

"I don't think they are finished until they've been produced," she says. In that case, the number is seven, with some of the plays having been produced by multiple theatre companies in different states.

Used to writing and performing poetry, Wurl had to get used to letting other people--directors, actors, designers, etc.--interpret her work. Now, she thinks it's "really cool" to see one of her plays produced by different casts. "It's a different, same play," she says.

One of those recent casts was at Essential Theatre in Atlanta. In January, Wurl's play, Miss Macbeth, was presented as part of the company's annual festival of new American plays. The other plays in the festival were written by playwright-superstars Sam Shepherd and Lee Blessing. Wurl's show received a lot of publicity and several positive reviews in publications like The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Creative Loafing.

Through it all, Wurl has maintained a low-key demeanor that can make her seem somewhat remote. With a shy smile and quiet attitude, Wurl draws little attention to herself. The true dynamism of her personality, however, is revealed in her poetry and her plays. Drawing on her own life experiences, Wurl admits most of her work is "self-confessional," although she doesn't like the term. "Every artist is a confessional artist," she told Creative Loafing, "they're just not as obvious about it."  

Now, as she weighs the idea of going back to college for a doctorate, Wurl is amused at the direction her life has taken. She, who resisted college, may be attending classes at the same time as her daughters. Her youngest child, Helen Herbst, currently sis an undergrad at Kennesaw State.

"Now, we can sit around together in our KSU T-shirts and not go to the basketball games together," Wurl says with her typical ironic humor.

That's all right--she doesn't have time for games any way.

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