UNC professor’s play makes it Off-Broadway

Make it on Tobacco Road and you can make it anywhere.

UNC communication studies professor Paul Ferguson and his “Good Ol’ Girls” finally have a taste of those blinding Manhattan lights.

“Good Ol’ Girls,” an original musical written and adapted by Ferguson, is now playing Off Broadway at the Black Box Theatre at Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre in New York.

The show, adapted from the prose of celebrated Southern writers Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle, additionally flaunts music composed by heralded Nashville songwriters Matraca Berg and Marshall Chapman.

“I wrote the show originally to honor my grandmother who raised me, Andrea my partner, and the four women who are my literary and musical heroes. All talented and hilarious southern women,” Ferguson said.

The current cast also features North Carolinian starlet Lauren Kennedy and veteran Broadway scarlet Sally Mayes.

Mix in Tony-nominated director, Randal Myler, and UNC’s own has recently strolled onto a star-studded stage.

A play about the strength of Southern women, “Good Ol’ Girls” is not a modern-day “Steel Magnolias.” It extends past well-known Southern cliches.

“The show opposes and rebuts the stereotypes of Southern women that are so offensive to me,” Ferguson said.

Deep-fried commentary and Southern-accented country music haul home a unique progression of characters’ growth from youth to maturity.

“It progresses thematically. Not driven by plot, but by the arc of one’s life. Think Virginia Woolf meets Dolly Parton,” Smith said.

Ferguson’s goal was to create thrilling musical theater that would resonate the concerns of women’s equality and relay truthful insights into life’s inevitable tragic occurrences.

“I don’t claim them as a remedy, but the performing arts can be a way of starting a conversation or addressing a problem. For example, it might be more difficult to get an abuser to go to a lecture on proper behavior than to go to a country rock concert,” Ferguson said.

The foxily adapted prose has the capacity to strangle an audience with laughter and to suck them into contemplation.

“We use humor as a way to make the darker even darker. When you get the audience laughing you can pull them in,” McCorkle said.

Ferguson first began working on “Good Ol’ Girls’” in 1998 with Smith, McCorkle, Berg and Chapman.

“At this point we’re all in a club, a support group,” Smith said.

The show originally toured the region to sellout crowds with the Cape Fear Regional Theatre Company under the direction of Bo Thorp, Chancellor Holden Thorp’s mother.

When the opportunity arose to take the production to New York, Ferguson and his four original good ol’ girls were ecstatic.

“I just kept looking at Lee because I couldn’t believe we were actually there, Off Broadway,” McCorkle said.

Ferguson’s ability to portray authentic Southern women has received praise from Southerners and New York critics alike.

“You know, Paul really is a good ol’ girl,” Smith said.



Contact the Arts Editor at artsdesk@unc.edu