By just reading a character synopsis from one of Terry Roueche's plays, you quickly pick up on his ability to examine the human nature and its will. "I have a philosophy I've used all my life," says Roueche, "I don't talk a lot, I listen. If you're the type of person who doesn't have to hear yourself talk, you don't have to work at maintaining an image that the world will accept. I use a lot of energy observing people and learning what makes them tick. In short, I study human nature and this gives me the ideas for characters in my plays."
Roueche has been writing, and "studying human nature," since he was eleven years old. He said he always knew that he would be a writer. Roueche, who grew up in Salisbury N.C., says he started out writing poetry and short stories, but then wrote his first play at the encouragement of one of his high school teachers. "One of my English teachers at Boyden High School took an interest in my writing and suggested I work on a play. I wrote it, and that was enough for me to know that I had discovered my true calling."
After high school, Roueche went to Western Carolina where he majored in English and minored in creative writing. "In college I wrote a lot of short stories and actually finished three novels. After college, however, I knew I had to do something to support myself, so I went to work as a reporter for the Camden Chronicle and later got a job at The Evening Herald in Rock Hill, S.C. I spent a total of three years as a newspaper reporter. The experience helped me learn how to talk to people and how to get information from them. As you might guess, I liked working on the human interest stories the best. It was a great way for me to use my curious nature and observe human behavior."
After three years, he decided to hang up his reporter's hat and do something that would help him meet the financial needs of his growing young family. "After I got married and we started having children, I knew I had to find something I could do that would allow me to be creative, but also give me a flexible schedule so that I could spend time writing plays. I had always been talented with a camera, so I opened up my own photography studio."
Roueche's commercial photography studio has done well enough to allow him to pursue his playwriting dreams. Soon after opening his photography business, he wrote a play Take My Wife, Please.which he cast and directed as a play to be performed at dinner theaters in country clubs around the Southeast. "I originally wrote the play in hopes it would be performed by Community Theater, but they were only performing well known plays at that time and didn't want any plays by unknown playwrights. I became very frustrated with this mentality, so I decided to get my own cast together. I organized, directed and marketed the play to all the area country clubs. For 10 years it was a success in this medium and almost every weekend we were booked. I eventually grew tired of this and had other plays I wanted to see performed, so I quit the dinner theater business."
So, Roueche decided to open his own Theater with the hopes of having his growing list of completed plays produced. He opened Main Street Theater in 1992 and enjoyed sold out crowds who came to see many of his one-act plays including: Final Opinion, Parade Day, Wilson In Small Pieces, Ugly Art and Life In A Jar. During this time he also entered many playwright contests and enjoyed the production of Parade Day, Take My Wife, Please and Norman Alexander on off off Broadway.
Roueche says he is proudest of his play, The Modern Approach, which is a full-length play about the breakdown in communication between two people who have been married for a long time. End....
