As a struggling playwright, I’m still evolving an artistic vision, but could not write for the theatre without a quixotic belief in the power of language to transform and transcend our lives. As a fantasist, I prefer a theatre that takes me to unfamiliar worlds, a theatre of heightened passions that’s imaginative, dangerous, and boldly reflects the collage of sounds and images that bombard us daily, yet is as dark, dense, and mysterious as our collective cultural myths. For theatre to compete with film and television, I believe playwrights have to move beyond creating realistic plays that simply mirror our domestic lives, and aspire to more ambitious epic dramas with characters who live within the context of history and the social and political forces surrounding them. Whenever I begin writing, I attempt to conjure brave, mythic protagonists in plays that require
a genuine fusion of art forms. Such plays would communicate compelling stories by employing poetic speech that risks being heretical, scenery of uncommon, even alien landscapes, and acting styles that reach beyond the confines of verisimilitude towards song and dance. Such an idealized theatre could become a place for the recitation of radiant language that lifts us from numbness and conformity, a place to feast the eyes
and ears, a place to speak the unspeakable, to question everything, even the cultural foundations that inspire the symbols and metaphors we use as signs of our essential truths. I truly believe that the theatre, with its roots in myth, poetry and spectacle, is starving for visionary creators to continue its honored purpose as the most vital confrontation art form.