This is a play about country girls, country cops, country people, country music.
Country music, for me, is this: music of the country. But my view of “country” includes cities. In fact, it includes every nook and cranny of America. Country music is, ultimately, inclusive. It includes everything and everybody. If your “country” is the streets of Chicago, so be it. If it is the red dirt of Alabama or the dust of western desert, so be it. The “Country Girls” that you will meet today, happen to be in a fictitious town in East Texas but they can be found anywhere in the USA.
What does it mean? “Country”? There is no all-encompassing definition of “country”. I steal my definition from Ken Burns’ documentary film, “Country Music”. Someone, somewhere in that wonderful documentary described country music as this: “Three chords and the truth.” Someone else defined it this way: “It’s not pretty..., but it’s honest.”
And that is what we have here with this play, Stephen Brown’s Country Girls. It is not pretty, but it is honest. In its honesty it is also very much these things: funny, tragic, surprising, painful, concerning these subjects: broken guitars, broken hearts, a road trip to a new life, fatherhood, motherhood, daughterhood, small towns, big ambition, and a whole lot more. “Three chords and the Truth!”
- John Hardy, Director of Country Girls
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