Cat Chupein is an actor, playwright and master gardener (among many other things). Cat’s play Patterns & Petunias will be presented as a staged reading on Saturday, April 25. It will be directed by well-known local talent Lee Conderacci.
BPF Board Advisor Larry Lambert connected with Cat to discuss what has driven her career and how her various pursuits interact.
L – Patterns and Petunias is a very interesting title. Why did you choose it?
C – The play was originally titled Faith: Not For The Faint Of Heart. I like long titles that feel like they go on forever, but it stopped working for me as I was developing the script. I went back and forth about how to change it for months. My partner asked me what some of my favorite titles were, and when I made my list, I saw that many of them had alliteration. The very next morning Patterns and Petunias popped into my head. Patterns relates to the cycles of familial abuse, behavior, and tradition. Petunias comes straight from a happy memory of my mother.
L – What is the basic premise of Patterns and what made you choose this subject?
C – Patterns and Petunias is an autobiographical memory play, so I guess you could say the subject chose me. I spill all of my mid-western tea in absurdly comic relief, as I recount horrors of family violence, mental illness, and deceit against a backdrop of performative Catholicism.
L – You mention that this is a play in development. How long has it taken you to get this far? Are you satisfied with where it is at this point?
C – I’ve been trying to tell this story for more than ten years. This script has been in development since September of 2024. I wrote the first scene on my phone in ten minutes. The rest of the play took a little longer. I workshopped it scene by scene at the Baltimore Playwrights Brew, had a first full reading with actors at my home in the summer of 2025, and the BPF will be my second staged reading. I’m very pleased with the script at this point. I’ll use the feedback from BPF to make some final edits and begin shopping for a theater to produce it fully.
L – One of our sources states that you “worked in the Chicago black box theater scene for twenty years before starting a family, moving to Baltimore, and changing every aspect of my life”. Why the move to Baltimore and how was the transition from a huge city like Chicago to a smaller one like Baltimore?
C – My partner and I love Baltimore. His family is here and near, and once we had our first child, we decided we needed to be closer. Baltimoreans are the best people. This is the first place where I feel truly at home and a part of a community.
L – When did you transition from actor/mom to playwright?
C – I’ve had a long on-again/off-again relationship with theater all my life. As much as I sometimes believe I need to leave it behind, I simply cannot do it. After my last ten-year break, I realized that I need to return with greater intention, powered by my own voice. With both of my children in school, I have long, beautiful hours to devote to bringing the ideas that have been rolling around in my mind to life through play writing. I wrote a one act musical during the pandemic as a creative outlet. Patterns and Petunias is my first full play.
L – As though you didn’t have enough to do, you became a master gardener dedicated to environmental advocacy, community engagement, and public education. What made you decide to take that turn?
C – It’s easy to feel defeated when confronting climate change. I don’t like that feeling. I’ve always combatted it with action. Learning and teaching the practices of environmental advocacy that can take place in anyone’s backyard is a natural step for me. I’d love for everyone to have a tiny patch of Nationally Certified Wildlife Habitat steps from their own front doors.
L – What tasks were involved in this change?
C – It’s mostly about networking and finding people who share your interests and goals. I found the Master Gardener Program through the UMD Extension, learned everything I could, and started volunteering. My kids brought me into the world of public schools and libraries, and there was need, desire, and the collaboration to make native garden projects work. I designed, installed, and organized community maintenance of public green spaces for four years. I recently joined Civics Works as their Greening Program Coordinator. Now I support these same kinds of projects on a much larger scale.
L – Where do you find the time to accommodate all these pursuits?
C – Great question! I do not. It never feels like there’s enough time, and I always feel like I’m forgetting something. You got any advice?
L – What would you like the audience to take away from Patterns?
C – I’d like them to know that they are so special, so deserving of love and healing, so worth the time and energy it takes to grow something from delicate seed to grand, strong, bold life. Your destiny is within yourself, and you have the power to realize it.
L – What’s next on your life journey?
C – I want a full production of Patterns and Petunias. I’ll be submitting to festivals and bothering people for advice. I’m raising my kids, working full time, and dealing with the annual interruption of mammograms.
L – Last question: where do you do the bulk of your creative writing?
