Artistic Statement

Artistic Statement

I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, writing plays and sneaking into Actors Theatre of Louisville for free. I have been fortunate to always live in a theatrical world that values experimentation, risk, success and failure. My main question as an artist is always what the stage can do that is different or better than all other art forms. I believe that the theatre provides more intimacy, more space for emotion, and more scope for imagination than any other art form. I try to take advantage of that, by having a play narrated by the ghost of a fiberglass whale at the bottom of a lake, by creating a world much like ours except you can choose to store your memories in jars, by telling the story of an 80 year old woman rebuilding a dirigible. But even within these magical elements, I strive to develop characters that ring true, and to write plays that ask big questions about things like love, loss, memory, and death. My artistic project seems to be "What do you do when you figure out you are not normal? How do you find a place to belong?"