Catherine Giorgetti had just wrapped up her first semester in Greece, where she was participating in the NUin Program, when she received exciting news. Her original play, Overcome, had officially been published. The play revolves around the events that unfold after a sexual assault occurs in an office setting. Catherine, who has always been a fan of Theatre for Social Change, pulled her inspiration from current events in the news.

She was in her senior year at Framingham High School when she had the opportunity to enter the Massachusetts Educational Theatre Guild’s Sherwood Collins Playwriting Contest. This competition asks high school students to write a 40-minute, one act play and submit it for judging. The winner receives a scholarship, and their play gets to be published by the New England based company, JAC Publishing. Catherine’s play about sexual assault in the workplace was chosen as the 2018 winner of this contest.

The production is unique from other one act plays; it consists of a high, upstage platform where the main character’s thoughts take on the form of characters. These ‘characters’ are the ones that do most of the speaking in the play, rather than the protagonist herself.

“At the time I was writing Overcome, the Me Too movement was just beginning, so I decided to write about sexual assault,” Catherine explained. “I came to the conclusion that the best way for audience members to understand what sexual assault does to a person is to actually have their thoughts be characters.”

In her high school acting class, much of the curriculum was centered around playwriting. It was in this class that Catherine was assigned entry to this competition as homework. When she began the writing process, her words flowed with ease.

“The writing of the play went fairly smoothly,” Catherine remembered. “I wrote the first draft without much struggle because I knew what I wanted. Expanding on what I had already thought of in later drafts became a bit of a struggle because I did not know how far I wanted the assault to go.”

With the help of her teacher, Catherine was able to find the balance she needed to make this a publishable play. She impressively completed the all of her writing within a month!

Catherine revealed that the most rewarding part of writing Overcome was discovering her love for playwriting, as well as being given the opportunity to have her work published. She is bringing this love to CAMD, where she is studying theatre. After finding out that Northeastern recently added a Playwriting minor to their programs, she hopes to add that to her studies in the coming years.

In the future, Catherine sees herself as a theatre collaborator and teacher.

“I love writing, performing, and recently, I have been very interested in directing as well,” she said. “My dream job would be to incorporate all three. I also love teaching because I love passing my passions down to other people. I hope to teach someday and maybe run a theatre program because theatre has done so much for me.”

CAMD is so excited to have such a talented and ambitious student in their program. Overcome is available for purchase here.