Drama Queens, a five-star arts journal focusing on female artists

Christine K. Duncan Interview

We all know that Cinderella is a rags to riches story.  What about the other people in rags?  In this twist on an endearing fairytale, Saving Cinderella seeks to explore the implications and impact of poverty.  Cinderella’s pumpkin coach will be heading to The Big Apple sometime in the future.  We had the pleasure of chatting with writer and composer, Christine K. Duncan.

After a worldly start in life, Ms. Duncan settled in Ohio in her teen years.  Singing at a young age led to songwriting and eventually putting on productions.  “I’m an Air Force brat who spent most of my childhood in Germany. Also had some time in California, and I’ve been based out of the Dayton, OH area since I was 14 years old. I loved singing as a kid, and as I got older, I became more interested in songwriting and putting together productions — usually for my local church.”

 Ms. Duncan was inspired to write this musical after her experience volunteering with the anti-poverty movement.  She is now using her art to raise awareness of the issue.  “My husband and I started volunteering with the anti-poverty movement here in Dayton, and the training we received, developed by Think Tank Inc., employed a relational approach to poverty alleviation. Along the lines of teaching someone to fish rather than just giving them fish, this was all of us being friends across every boundary (race, socioeconomics, politics…) and finding ways to better each other’s situation. It was so beautiful. And I saw lives changed. And I just knew I needed to share this vision.”

Ms. Duncan chose “Cinderella” to build her musical around because the content aligned with the message that she wanted to convey.  “Pretty early on in getting involved in anti-poverty work, I suddenly thought of the Cinderella fairytale and how the Prince barely knew her before he married her. His way of rescuing her from poverty and abuse was to make her his bride — and in this case, that made her a princess. But if you just change someone’s social station, have you really “fixed” all the factors that got them there in the first place? From what I’ve seen, there’s a lot more to escaping poverty than money.”

It’s not uncommon to face obstacles when creating a theatrical piece.  Everything from writer’s block to lack of funding impedes the process.  While trying to write Saving Cinderella and simultaneously holding down a stressful full-time job, Ms. Duncan was facing deeply personal obstacles.   “When I was first working on Saving Cinderella, I was a manager on the administrative side of the mental health field. I had over 20 direct reports and was working with operations. It was a lot. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had an underlying health condition that limited my capacity.  So, I would work and then come home and crash. Then, not long after my husband and I started volunteering, we began to experience a season of extreme loss and struggle. Every quarter for 4 and a half years, there was something — a death, a health issue, loss of income, loss of career. Life-changing event after life-changing event. We ended up living ifn situational poverty which lasted over 6 years and was accompanied by severe mental health concerns. That part of our journey resolved about 2 years ago. But I have to say that I am grateful to have walked those years. After getting to live some of what I had started to write about, I poured as much of my experience into Saving Cinderella as I could. I believe one of the many gifts that came out of that season was the enrichment of this show — and I wouldn’t trade it.” 

Despite the heavy subject matter of the show, it’s still a fairytale and appropriate for children.  “Not every re-envisioning of a fairytale is for kids, but this one is! Part of the vision for Saving Cinderella is multiple generations being prompted to reexamine how we think about poverty and the journey out of it. We do have one moment in the show that might be too much for the littles or the most sensitive (when our evil baddie attacks one of our heroes with a knife) but, there’s nothing more than you would expect in any fairytale story. And this is definitely a fairytale. Even though we are addressing issues of poverty and charity that are entirely current and modern, we get to do so in this beautiful, fun fairytale world.”

Saving Cinderella is continuing in its development process.  Cinderella has a fairy godmother in her corner.  Maybe Saving Cinderella does too.  “We have been blessed to have 2 table reads produced in part by TheatreLab Dayton, and last year, with the support of local nonprofit CE3, we held a successful fundraising campaign in support of a local production. We are currently releasing our demos on streaming and finding our partners to put on that local production — hopefully in the 2024/2025 theatrical season.”  Stay tuned for your invitation to the ball!