WRITING THE FISHERMAN’S DAUGHTERS Katie Dahl, Playwright & Composer Thirty years ago this summer, my grandparents, my mom, and I tramped down a trail through the Peninsula State Park cedars to the Northern Sky amphitheater for the first time. I was eight. I didn’t know it then, but when I sat my eight-year-old self down on one of those hard wooden benches (no seat cushions back then!), a little root planted itself. The fact that decades later I became a Northern Sky playwright feels both as natural and as miraculous as any woodland flower. Other musical theater writers grew up revering Sondheim; I didn’t know who he was. The theater writers I grew up revering were James Kaplan, James Valcq, Doc Heide, and Fred Alley. And the stories and songs they wrote took place on the peninsula where my family had been living for 150 years. I learned from them the beauty of clear-eyed, heart-filled songs and the music that lies in even the most mundane small-town Door County interactions. And so it makes all kinds of sense that my latest play is set against the backdrop of the creation of the very state park where that playwright root planted itself thirty years ago. The Fisherman’s Daughters tells the story of two sisters trying to heal their ruptured relationship and trying to stop the state of Wisconsin from turning their family homestead into—you guessed it—Peninsula State Park. 1 2/6/18 1:10 PM CHR_program Mar 4_75x1_625 copy2018.pdf
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