I love logic and puzzles, and I love playwriting because, to me, it is solving a puzzle. It is deducing the right questions to ask, and leaving the audience to answer them for themselves. My goal as a writer is to make audiences uncomfortable, to deprive them of the solace of a happy ending, to make them face the traits in themselves that they would rather not see.

On character: First and foremost, I write queer women. I write layered and nuanced queer women, loving and evil, vicious and sad, brilliant and annoying, and everything in between. I strive to make space for queer women in theatre, to give them a sense of humanity, depth, and nuance that they have historically and still so often been deprived of. I write young women whose emotions feel too big for their bodies to hold. I am also especially interested in family bonds - specifically siblings and mother/daughter relationships. Very importantly, I write bitches you love to hate!!!! You love to absolutely hate them, to see them suffer, you root for their downfall second after second and relish in their comeuppance, but also realize they’re just a little too similar, a little too close to home, to be comfortable.

On story: I believe very few things in life aren’t exhausting, and that my work should reflect that. I write first loves and first heartbreaks. I strive to dive deeper into the intricacies of human relationships and what it means to love at our own detriment or benefit. I write stories about growing up, stories that make the audience and the characters feel like they are in high school again, that they know everything there is to know about the world but the world is about to play the biggest practical joke on them. I write plays with no happy endings. I write exhausting scenarios where no one ever really wins.

On feeling: I write quiet beauty, stillness, and charged silences. I write for the silences, for the whispered words instead of the outbursts. I write to celebrate the pain everyone who loves and cares about someone else goes through. I write little stories in little settings that are full of giant emotions. I write dim lights and darkness and nighttime, probably late enough that most people are fast asleep. And if the play isn’t literally set at night, it still feels just a little bit like it is.

On rules: I write hyper-realistic dialogue and pieces where dialogue is at the forefront of the play. As a young actor, I was so tired of reading dialogue that was completely unrealistic and insulting. One of my original motivations for writing plays was to create characters, situations, and dialogue that would be dynamic and interesting for actors, and I continue to write with that perspective emphasized. I write plays in which the actors tell me how fun the characters are to play. I write “slice of life” plays with very grounded and realistic settings. I love writing characters in their homes or bedrooms. I will sometimes write plays that lean into a magical realism realm, but still with very clear rules of their world.