As an actor myself, it's hard not to notice how many of the roles available to women so often fall into stock types like "mother" or "girlfriend" - roles written mostly in service of the male characters. Who are these women beyond their relationships to the men around them? What do THEY want? How do THEY think? What do THEY feel?

Well, I'm determined to find out.

Women are so much more than the labels other people have put on us for millennia. To borrow a line from Louisa May Alcott, "Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as just beauty. I’m so sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for." Women deserve the full range of expression and humanity onstage and off. It's what I look for as an actor myself and what I try to write for other actors who identify as women. We deserve to exist on our own terms and have roles that reflect the complexities of our humanity.