My role as an artist is to pay attention and listen. This is a lifelong practice that I fail at all the time. When we choose to be artists, especially writers, we're responsible for what we hear. With whatever I write, I seek to open myself further, to be more moved by the stimuli around me. I want to allow myself to be stirred to meaning, to be open to the touch of the world.

One of the more powerful touches I've felt is that of an audience. Breathing in tandem with those around me when we share a story continues to be a transformative sensation for me. One moment where we share a gasp, a laugh, an outtake of breath. Those moments of togetherness ignite me, but they've begun to give me pause.

There is an art to coordinating those moments of togetherness: an almost mathematical equation. I am well versed in what Mac Wellman refers to as the Euclidean character: a character who possesses an internal symmetry that satisfies an audience's hunger for clear patterns. It mimics the symmetry of the Hero's Journey. When you see that pain and suffering attract attention, that audiences will permit much if you offer an emotional catharsis, that you'll continue to watch something and attain some satisfaction even when you see the gears: it’s a little terrifying.

There was a moment in writing my last play, Dumb Bitch Juice, in which I was fighting to incorporate audience participation to mimic organizing around a climate action. As I was working, I realized I was making a lot of assumptions about my audience, and I felt the participation container I built was too small to allow for all the difference in my audience. I wasn't listening to all their inherent possibilities. I adjusted the level of participation to honor all that I didn't know about them.

This act was deeply tied to Edouard Glissant's concept of opacity: that when we're relating across difference, the goal of the encounter isn't to fold another's difference into their preconceived worldview. Both must honor each other's right to opacity to be perceived on their own terms, without collapsing their experience into something easily consumable .

There are some days where I ache to be understood on my own terms. When I know that in every exchange is a translation, and I don’t want separation anymore. But there would be a certain violence in that kind of intimacy—love would be an involuntary unity that erases any opacity. Whoever I came in contact with would be forced into my terms, and that feels a whole lot like colonialism: wanting to touch without being touched. I don’t believe that anyone can be understood universally on their own terms, but the theatre offers us a space to be perceived on our own terms. There are certain experiences that exist outside of language, and trapping them in language can eliminate their meaning. I strive to use spectacle, movement, sound, silences and overall form to create frameworks of perception that offer truth without contorting to a specter’s preferred frame. When I’m at my best, when I remember what a liberatory love is, I refuse to be anything other than an ambassador to mystery and infinite fluidity.

In the future, I seek to make space for more openness in my work: I value those moments of togetherness, but I don't want the search for togetherness to override the productive splits that occur in audiences. I will resist the 'expert' status of the playwright, and co-create meaning with my collaborators and my audience. There is more risk in being misunderstood, but it brings us closer to the art we're meant to make.