Artistic Statement
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Cristina Luzárraga
Artistic Statement
I don't approach playwriting with any grand mission. I mostly think of it as playing with my inner trickster. I'm just trying to surprise and amuse myself, and I figure the meaning, such as it is, will flow from that.
That said, organizations often want artistic statements longer than three sentences, so here's a more verbose attempt to sum up what I do:
I write about women doing battle with their primal impulses. Whether it concerns art, sex, childbearing, or breastfeeding, the women in my plays struggle to honor their visceral desires while still adhering to societal expectations of feminine propriety. They want. And what they want, they want bad. But they’re the kind of women who know that that last sentence exhibits poor grammar, and really, oughtn’t we to avoid that kind of thing? Oughtn’t we to behave as the well-educated, respectable women to whom we all aspire? (No. But easier said than done.) Oftentimes my protagonists are intelligent enough to recognize the ways in which their conformity betrays their authentic selves. But intelligence only gets you so far. Intelligence won't solve the ultimatum between primal and proper. And coupled with privilege, intelligence can be dangerous if it blinds you to the suffering of others. After all, everyone has needs, so why do one woman’s needs, however well articulated, matter more than those of someone else?
My plays wrestle with these questions, imagining various scenarios wherein Eve eats the apple and then tries in vain to go about her business. She was hungry; who hasn’t been hungry? And if Adam also eats the apple, why is it her fault? And hell, how was she supposed to know that the serpent would catch flak too, or that all of humanity would wind up expelled from Eden forever (!), which, given the circumstances, seems pretty severe. Put simply, I'm interested in the unforeseen consequences of a woman giving into (her better? lesser?) nature. If those consequences turn out to be darkly comic, then so much the better because 1) that's life, and 2) generally speaking, plays that make you laugh are better than plays that don't.
That said, organizations often want artistic statements longer than three sentences, so here's a more verbose attempt to sum up what I do:
I write about women doing battle with their primal impulses. Whether it concerns art, sex, childbearing, or breastfeeding, the women in my plays struggle to honor their visceral desires while still adhering to societal expectations of feminine propriety. They want. And what they want, they want bad. But they’re the kind of women who know that that last sentence exhibits poor grammar, and really, oughtn’t we to avoid that kind of thing? Oughtn’t we to behave as the well-educated, respectable women to whom we all aspire? (No. But easier said than done.) Oftentimes my protagonists are intelligent enough to recognize the ways in which their conformity betrays their authentic selves. But intelligence only gets you so far. Intelligence won't solve the ultimatum between primal and proper. And coupled with privilege, intelligence can be dangerous if it blinds you to the suffering of others. After all, everyone has needs, so why do one woman’s needs, however well articulated, matter more than those of someone else?
My plays wrestle with these questions, imagining various scenarios wherein Eve eats the apple and then tries in vain to go about her business. She was hungry; who hasn’t been hungry? And if Adam also eats the apple, why is it her fault? And hell, how was she supposed to know that the serpent would catch flak too, or that all of humanity would wind up expelled from Eden forever (!), which, given the circumstances, seems pretty severe. Put simply, I'm interested in the unforeseen consequences of a woman giving into (her better? lesser?) nature. If those consequences turn out to be darkly comic, then so much the better because 1) that's life, and 2) generally speaking, plays that make you laugh are better than plays that don't.