Artistic Statement

Artistic Statement

I have been working in the professional theater for almost 35 years, first as an actor and later, after attending the Juilliard playwriting program, as a writer. Lately I also write and direct films.

I am inspired by female-identified artists who create across every life phase, artists like Irene Fornes, Louise Bourgeois, and Agnes Varda, who continued to give voice to what they saw and felt.

I love collaboration! Having trained as an actor with Anne Bogart in the experimental theater and finding story through the body, I learn what a new play is in the rehearsal room, once I can “SEE” it on the actual bodies of the actors. I write for the theater (and now the camera) because I feel passionately about embodied art forms. Therefore, I involve actors early in my process, bringing them into the process of completing early drafts and building later ones - through readings, workshops, even Zoom meetings. Then and only then, the secret life of the play is revealed. The way I see it, my plays are templates – musical scores – but the music doesn’t happen until each individual actor arrives, ready to play.

Lately I have been struggling with gendered agism – at 53, I’m being asked to “rewrite my narrative” (are men asked to do that?) in order to prove that my stories are still worth telling. I write dark comedies, character-centered and playful, often focused on female friendship and identity – but truthfully, I’ve written over 25 full length plays and subject matter ranges wildly, from Jewish identity to punk rockers in a mommy group to the relationship between grief and Buddhism. My plays often begin with something personal but expand outwards, towards larger ideas about community, intellectual property, ownership, and sometimes trauma, often through the lens of relationship and identity, often with playful narrative structures that include the audience via direct address and breaking the fourth wall.