Wearing a green sweater, red T-shirt and jeans, 37-year-old John Crutchfield is exhausted after performing his one-man show “The Songs of Robert” at the NC Stage in Asheville last Saturday.

“It’s a demanding show physically and cathartically,” Crutchfield said, talking without a mountain accent.

The poet, playwright and performer has spent 10 years verbally sculpting his show about a day in the life of a high school boy who grew up in Appalachia.

Portraying 11 characters, three of which are women, the actor is on a quest to honor his homeland.

“I want to do theater for and about this region of the country because this place nourishes my art, and I really believe in theater as a homegrown grassroots form, and this is my home,” Crutchfield said.

Crutchfield was born in Austin, Texas, and raised in Boone. He currently teaches part-time at Warren Wilson College while living in Asheville.

After receiving his BA from UNC-Chapel Hill, he pursued his MFA in Poetry and Doctorate in English Literature from Cornell University.

Interspersed though out his educational pursuits, Crutchfield traveled abroad as an artist-in-residence to France and Germany.

Having no formal training in theater, and after writing a play about John Keats with a friend in 1994, he felt confident he could write for the stage and thrived on collaboration.

Pursuing those ambitions, Crutchfield left a teaching position at Appalachian State, noting he has “no health insurance and a crappy car.”

Presenting “The Songs of Robert” for the first time as a one-man show, he was concerned whether he could sustain the energy and concentration for an hour-and-15-minute production by himself.

Using live music, verse and choreography to portray the eclectic characters, Crutchfield takes the audience through the teenage angst of being in love with someone who doesn’t know his main character of Robert exists.

Starting out as a collection of poems, Crutchfield became “obsessed with this material” chiseling away at the play adding the Appalachian experience while creating characters like Pap, Robert’s Southern Appalachian gregarious father who plays the banjo, and Coach Sloe, a philosophical high school P.E. instructor.

“I went to high school with these people,” Crutchfield said.

During his high school years he wasn’t interested in his Appalachian roots, but after being away from the South, the playwright’s appreciation has grown deeper.

“I missed the landscape, the seasons and the music of this area,” Crutchfield said. “I became interested in understanding my childhood.”

Describing Appalachian culture as very layered and complex, Crutchfield notes people have tended to “stay put and ripen their dialects and traditions,” which he emphasizes in his play.

“You dig deep down and see people who know old stories and melodies and speak in the same way,” Crutchfield said.

While he has played the steel guitar for five years, the artist has been learning to play the banjo for the last three months incorporating those songs like “Pig in a Pen,” and “Mole in the Ground,” into his performance.

“This is a fascinating place to live and these are my roots — I am an example of the new Southerner because I chose to come back,” Crutchfield said.

For more information on Crutchfield visit www.johncrutchfield.com.