“The object of any teacher is to make herself obsolete.” My high school choir director said those words in 2010, and they have been my worldview ever since. In my teaching and my artistry, my greatest hope is to be obsolete, to help craft a world where I am no longer needed, a world that can grow and change without me.
My plays center Ozarker lives and Ozarker issues because those stories are, in my view, stories that need to be told immediately if my obsoletion is ever to be obtained. Allowing even one region to be erased from the nation’s narrative creates channels through which the oppression of others can, not only continue, but worsen. The conflation of Ozarker identity with Southern identity in the past 50 years has facilitated a boom in white supremacists and racists ideology. The exoticization of the hills and the hillbillies within has led to harmful economic and agricultural policies that hold the region in poverty and isolation. Both the conflation and the exoticization have formed a loop that hurts everyone around it.
In my work, I strive to show the hills cut bare – I do not shy away from the violent and racist history of my home, nor do I hide the abuse of kin or substance – but I also celebrate the beauty of Ozarker life. I let my characters revel in the intricate minutiae of hunting, of peach witching, of persimmon plucking, and of coupon cutting. I write plays that double as dances, with scores crafted in tandem with the coyotes and the crickets and the slap of water against the bluffs. I write both people and allegory, and I encourage each to speak both inward to a home I hope to see grow and outward to world I hope to see embrace every child who has honey suckle in their veins and red clay on their feet.