Artistic Statement

Artistic Statement

I write plays with intimate relationships at the center. Those relationships often reveal observations about the world at large. My plays often involve some form of magical realism or heightened theatricality, often using moments of poetic language and aesthetic references in contrast to realistic dialogue and contemporary situations and settings.

A play is, in the truest sense of the word, a living document. It is given life by the playwright alone in a room, and then gets a second life in rehearsal, a third life on stage, and a fourth life at home with the audience who has witnessed it. Playwriting is multi-dimensional. It is sight, sound, hearing, scent, touch. There is a vitality to theater that excites me; a promise of a collective experience. Theater has been around since humans first saw the need to see themselves and their stories played back to them. If there were some catastrophic event that robbed us of electricity, theater people would pick up candles and torches and continue to make plays. I truly believe that. No matter how much people like to say the theater is dying, I believe it is immortal. So long as humans want to be seen, and see themselves reflected back, the theater will remain. I plan to be a part of it for as long as I am alive.