Artistic Statement

Artistic Statement

Humans are weird. We act against our own self-interest over and over, we make obvious mistakes, we forgive and forgive and forgive, we hold grudges over arguments we can’t remember, and we persevere through situations that make us want to lie down and wait for death. Some of us become writers even though there are literally thousands of other career options available to us.

I am one of those weirdos.

I am captivated by the ways humans endeavor and the ways they fall short, and I need to scrutinize both with storytelling. This is why I write. I spend time living in my stories and getting to know my characters. I delve into traits that are nothing like my own or that are exactly like my own or are heightened versions of my best and worst selves. I also share these stories with collaborators - performers, other writers, directors, designers, audiences. It’s what I have to do. This is why I write theatre.

My mission as a writer is to explore the whys behind human foibles. If you’ve taken a fencing class (niche crowd, I realize, but run with me for a minute), you know that the weaker part of a sword blade is called a foible. Isn’t that far more interesting than what you already know about a sword? There’s a weak part even to a sword - something made for slicing and hacking apart enemies or beheading thieves or whatever else swords do. Same goes for humans. Our flaws make us unique at the same time that they unite us. The tiny pieces of ourselves that we hide from the world and how we overcome them (or lean into them; you do you) fascinate me, and they deserve to be explored and highlighted and celebrated and questioned and analyzed. In my writing, I explore, highlight, celebrate, question, and analyze human foibles and how they crop up especially in the most serious of situations.