Artistic Statement

I write about the ideas that keep us up at night with a gentleness that invites us to celebrate existential dread rather than ignore it. A sampling of those ideas:

Some people linger, even after they have died.
Remembering lovely memories sometimes hurts.
Theater both mitigates and fosters loneliness.
Distance from a parent you love is a form of grief.
Anticipating global climate disaster is a destabilizing emotion to sustain.
To love someone is to constantly encounter the limit to which a person is knowable.

I write to embrace the happysad, the unmakingsense, and the inscrutability of the everyday. I write to hold people close, knowing it'll never be close enough. The holding is the important thing, anyway.

Typically, plays occur to me in little flashes that, if I have the wherewithal, I write down somewhere. Then the script grows, like glitter falling into a kaleidoscope. This way of writing feels very pleasurable to me, and also makes me wonder how my head is screwed on.

My friend told me that I write about the accumulation of life in such a way that the heaviness of living creeps up on the audience, and is danced around, celebrated, and honored. I hope to keep doing that for the rest of my life.

Anya Richkind

Artistic Statement

I write about the ideas that keep us up at night with a gentleness that invites us to celebrate existential dread rather than ignore it. A sampling of those ideas:

Some people linger, even after they have died.
Remembering lovely memories sometimes hurts.
Theater both mitigates and fosters loneliness.
Distance from a parent you love is a form of grief.
Anticipating global climate disaster is a destabilizing emotion to sustain.
To love someone is to constantly encounter the limit to which a person is knowable.

I write to embrace the happysad, the unmakingsense, and the inscrutability of the everyday. I write to hold people close, knowing it'll never be close enough. The holding is the important thing, anyway.

Typically, plays occur to me in little flashes that, if I have the wherewithal, I write down somewhere. Then the script grows, like glitter falling into a kaleidoscope. This way of writing feels very pleasurable to me, and also makes me wonder how my head is screwed on.

My friend told me that I write about the accumulation of life in such a way that the heaviness of living creeps up on the audience, and is danced around, celebrated, and honored. I hope to keep doing that for the rest of my life.