I am drawn to plays that ask questions. In my own plays, there are many questions but they are often left unanswered, mostly due to our inability to truly listen to one another. My characters reflect how we live in the world today, with a little theater magic sprinkled in. There are so many people who live in between worlds (or cultures, languages, ethnicities, genders, etc.) who are looking for connection with one another but we somehow can’t get the timing right or something in our past holds us back, and we are left floundering in space or living in a vacuum of our own noise. I enjoy throwing these characters together to see what happens. What limits us from getting what we truly desire? I am forever interested in human behavior and the stories of families, made or chosen.
My goal in every play is to make the impossible feel inevitable. I want the audience to feel surprised by their own empathy. I want them to be laughing one moment and then saddened by the next because even in the most tragic of moments on stage, I will seek out the comedy. That is real life.
I admire theatre that can accomplish the most with the least amount of language. This is probably a reflection of my desire to capture the way people truly speak today. It is rarely in monologue form, but more disjointed, abrupt, and often overlapping with other characters. The style in which a character speaks is a direct reflection of their own identity. My plays explore complete flip flops of hierarchy and the use of language as a tool to showcase this is no exception.
Naturally, my own identity is often reflected on stage. My perspective in life - and playwriting- comes from my experience as a woman, a mother of bi-racial children, a daughter of immigrants, a person who lives in a multi-lingual household, and as a person wavering between class structures.