Baltimore Playwrights Festival

Five Minutes with the Playwright: An Interview with Andrea Fine Carey

  • March 2nd, 2021
andrea fine carey
  1. LOST CAUSES is a recent play you’ve submitted to The Baltimore Playwrights Festival. What is it about?
    LOST CAUSES shows the disintegration of a white southern family when they display a huge Confederate flag in retaliation for the removal of a Confederate statue. As the crowd of protestors grows more agitated outside the house, family tensions mount inside, especially after the favorite son comes home with his African-American wife.
  2. Why was it important to you to write LOST CAUSES?
    After the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA, I felt driven to examine what makes a person choose to embrace racism, violence, and the doctrine of white supremacy. Since then, the prevalence of police brutality against black people, the stark political divisions that have strained our country, and the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol reveal an urgent need to better understand this disturbing tendency.
  3. What special challenges did you encounter in the writing a play that deals with a headline topic?
    I hope LOST CAUSES will provoke everyone–both liberals and conservatives–to consider how their actions may inadvertently contribute to the fear, ignorance and estrangement that underlie extremism. This is difficult to do without alienating the audience. The feedback I got from the Baltimore Playwright’s Festival readers was invaluable in helping me present both sides of this highly sensitive and thorny issue.
  4. Tell us about yourself.
    I live in Bethesda, MD, not far from the house where I grew up in Chevy Chase. Since I’ve stopped teaching project management for the federal government, I’ve been taking classes in improv, story-telling, and Nia dance.
  5. What are you working on now?
    I’m putting finishing touches on the book and lyrics for a musical about Esther, the Queen of Persia, who saved her people from genocide in the 5th century B.C.