Artistic Statement

Artistic Statement

Hi. My name is Shualee Cook and I write things. I write plays and musical sas a way of asking questions and figuring out possible answers within a community. I write for the theatre, specifically, because it’s important to me to be one of many artists discussing subjects through a piece rather than a solitary voice proclaiming something. I write plays that reach for that sense of community and conversation within their very structures, seldom focusing on one protagonist, or one "hot button issue." I like big theatrical plays with more than one trick up their sleeve, overflowing with different perspectives and ideas. In such a fractured individualistic time, I think it’s a mistake for our shows to constantly recreate the default way people already experience the world - locked into one perspective, the protagonists of our own lives. My goal as an artist is to give people a different frame for reality, where every room is stuffed full of different world views shaped by unseen forces, where no event is just one person’s story. I’m also invested in excavating queer history, telling the stories still often erased by dominant narratives.