Artistic Statement
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Tyler Rivenbark
Artistic Statement
"Beauty is not a state of being but a kind of belief, seeing past what is to what may be."
- Kevin Young, The Grey Album
Author Leah Hampton wrote that “Americans have always used rural spaces to validate and perpetuate toxic masculinity, erase people of color and justify destroying ecosystems.” As someone raised in the rural south, I’m distinctly aware of this unique American practice. And as a writer, my work has been wrought from the pressure created within the constant push and pull of these ecosystems.
Born into a working-class family and raised in an economically-depressed, majority-minority town in North Carolina, there has always been a complicated intersection of trauma, resilience and beauty in my writing. My hometown was divided by race and rife with toxicity, which created unfortunate and harmful consequences that have rippled throughout generations. Because of this, the community, and society writ large, have further neglected and denigrated residents while reflecting back a negative story about who we are or who we can be.
But it is in this environment – with all of its failings, darkness, and yes, joy and triumph – that I as a writer was shaped and refined, and my belief in theatre’s power was formed. Given this upbringing, I create diverse stories that challenge hegemonic mainstream narratives about lower-income and working-class communities. My hometown, and those around the world like it, are far more diverse and complex than we have been led to believe. My mission as a playwright is to craft and share stories that complicate the popular imagination of working-class communities (rural and urban), to reveal their diversity, and rewrite the long-held narratives about them in order to tell new, fuller, more humane stories.
From an Indigenous iron worker who longs to be a sculptor to parents grieving their veteran son’s suicide to a group of young incarcerated men fighting wild fires, my body of work reaches for ambitious heights through genre-bending, risk-taking, theatrically bold writing that emphasizes the beauty, importance and dignity of the characters in my plays. My work aims to act as a corrective, however small, to the lack of complex stories that continue to occupy valuable space on our stages.
- Kevin Young, The Grey Album
Author Leah Hampton wrote that “Americans have always used rural spaces to validate and perpetuate toxic masculinity, erase people of color and justify destroying ecosystems.” As someone raised in the rural south, I’m distinctly aware of this unique American practice. And as a writer, my work has been wrought from the pressure created within the constant push and pull of these ecosystems.
Born into a working-class family and raised in an economically-depressed, majority-minority town in North Carolina, there has always been a complicated intersection of trauma, resilience and beauty in my writing. My hometown was divided by race and rife with toxicity, which created unfortunate and harmful consequences that have rippled throughout generations. Because of this, the community, and society writ large, have further neglected and denigrated residents while reflecting back a negative story about who we are or who we can be.
But it is in this environment – with all of its failings, darkness, and yes, joy and triumph – that I as a writer was shaped and refined, and my belief in theatre’s power was formed. Given this upbringing, I create diverse stories that challenge hegemonic mainstream narratives about lower-income and working-class communities. My hometown, and those around the world like it, are far more diverse and complex than we have been led to believe. My mission as a playwright is to craft and share stories that complicate the popular imagination of working-class communities (rural and urban), to reveal their diversity, and rewrite the long-held narratives about them in order to tell new, fuller, more humane stories.
From an Indigenous iron worker who longs to be a sculptor to parents grieving their veteran son’s suicide to a group of young incarcerated men fighting wild fires, my body of work reaches for ambitious heights through genre-bending, risk-taking, theatrically bold writing that emphasizes the beauty, importance and dignity of the characters in my plays. My work aims to act as a corrective, however small, to the lack of complex stories that continue to occupy valuable space on our stages.