Artistic Statement

Artistic Statement

If the theater is a cultural and social crossroad in our society -- a place where disparate ideas and values meet, collide and diverge again, -- then Bianca's plays are violent intersections that force audiences to face their own complex love affair with misery. She writes plays to create understanding between people of all cultural backgrounds by asking them to wrestle with the traumatic things in life that can simultaneously pull us apart and hold us together as humans. Because, let’s face it, no matter your cultural or sociopolitical background, shit happens and that fact makes pain a great equalizer. Her work examines what happens when characters meet at these perilous crossroads in their lives. 

Bianca's plays are lyrical investigations of found stories out of today’s headlines or the pages of history that focus on the conundrum of whether the stress and pain we inflict upon ourselves and others is actually purifying or destroying the fabric of humanity. She is particularly interested in how trauma affects us on an individual level but, also ripples outward to loved ones and the larger community. She is equally fascinated by how each person must choose to either allow their adversity to consume them or rise above the trauma. Bianca often examines the different adaptive and maladaptive ways in which people choose to cope. She has been inspired by both modern and historical events.  She approaches each piece with an investigative journalistic eye mixing research with her own brand of lyricism and poetic language, while also attempting to go beyond the politics and facts of the original tale, to connect an audience with the personal story behind what inspired her. 

As a female playwright of color, she is drawn to stories that question the roles of women, ethnicity, and family in modern society, that deal with the search for self in the collective identity and which explore underlying connective threads of mankind.  Bianca weaves hot button social issues into her work because growing up in the politically active San Francisco Bay Area instilled a drive to create art that “holds as it ‘twere a mirror up to nature”.  She hopes that through watching a dynamic dramatization of these issues unfold before their eyes, she will engage the audience in a visceral manner that convicts them to do something about it. You can see the fingerprints of  her approach in her full length plays, At The Rivers End, Battle Cry, Rust On Bone, Black. Irish., Simply Bess, Rise Phoenix Rise and Summer Nights & Fireflies.