Meet the Playwright: Francesca Pazniokas (KEEP)

Francesca Pazniokas is an NYC-based writer and musician whose work has been performed in New York, London and Chicago. Her short play Goodnight was a Heideman Award Finalist at the Actors Theatre of Louisville this past winter. Francesca received her Master’s in Playwriting from Royal Holloway, where this play was originally workshopped. Keep is her first play.

We and Mastodon Theatre Company are so very excited to be co-producing the world-premiere of your play Keep. Can you give us a bit of a synopsis of the play and provide some insight in terms of what inspired it?
 
I’m excited, too! Thank you for fostering new work, and for taking a chance on me and my first full-length play.

Keep is about a hoarder and her sisters, who are trying to clean her house and reconnect in the wake of losing another sibling. I wanted to explore how we decide what (and who) has value in our lives, and how we determine our own worth.

This play isn’t autobiographical, but it is deeply personal. I had a couple bumpy years where I struggled with hoarding, among other things. My grandmother died a few weeks before I started writing Keep, and while I didn’t begin hoarding again, I worried I would. In the past, losing such a huge support in my life would have created a vacuum that self-destructive behaviors might fill. Writing Keep helped me process those past experiences I’d tried to forget—to remind myself I shouldn’t romanticize or demonize the person I was then, and am now. Ultimately, Keep is about loyalty and loss, which I think everyone can relate to. But I also hope Keep speaks to people who have struggled with addiction, and those who may have felt hurt and helpless to support their loved ones.

When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? What made you start writing plays?

I started writing plays fairly recently, actually. After college, I was working as an actor, which really didn’t suit me. I liked sitting at home, amusing myself by rewriting all my lines so they sounded like words people would actually say, more than I liked standing on stage performing. So I decided to get my MFA in acting—because if you don’t enjoy something you should definitely spend more time doing it. During a grad school callback, I was asked what my dream (acting) role would be. And I said, without thinking: “a writer.” The head of the program was horrified, but I was even more horrified. I’d never actually written a play before. I had no idea if I could do it. Luckily I’ve trained myself to listen to any embarrassing public life realizations I might have. And so here I am two years later, writing. 

Who or what has been your biggest influence as a writer? What inspires you to get to the page?

I was fortunate in a lot of ways to have a solitary childhood where I could soak up artistic influences like a sponge. The time other kids were spending with each other I would spend reading books, watching movies, listening to music, lurking around the local library—the typical perks of being an odd kid in a tiny town. When I finally started writing, I had a clear sense of my own artistic taste and point of view, which gave me a solid foundation to build from.

That being said—often I write to discover how I feel about something. I’m an opinionated person, but I find it difficult to express or identify my emotions. I get overwhelmed. It’s like there are dozens of songs playing at once, just a wall of sound, and I can’t pick out the words. With Keep, what ‘got me to the page’ on difficult days was my desire to discover how I felt about hoarding, my struggle to hide it, and the impact it had on my loved ones.

In terms of your creative process, do you have a particular ritual when it comes to writing? If so, can you share it with us?

My creative process is a powerful mystery known only to a few, but I’ll reveal the secret to you now. 1. Sit down to write, followed immediately by 2. Call my sister and whine about how I can’t concentrate. Honestly, it’s a constant battle to focus, especially when no one else is dictating your deadlines. But I’ve found that a combination of ambient noise, caffeine, and the great yawning terror that you’ll never produce any work again usually does the trick.

Can you tell us about any additional projects you are working on right now?

Thanks for asking! I’m currently working on a horror show collaboration with Insomnium Theatre Company, and I just found out my short play Everlast will be produced at DC’s Source Festival this summer. I’m also in the process of finishing up another full-length play, which is written using only found/verbatim text surrounding a murder trial from the 1910s that has fascinated me for years.


Keep begins previews at The Barrow Group Theatre on April 7 and runs through April 30. Get your tickets here.

Meet the Playwright: Dan Kitrosser

Dan Kitrosser has been teaching year-round at Writopia since 2007. He is the founding artistic director of Writopia's Worldwide Plays Festival and teaches musical theater, playwriting, language play, and fiction workshops. Dan is currently an MFA student (dramatic writing) at the New School and is also the resident storyteller at Central Park and an award-winning playwright. His plays and musicals have appeared at Urban Stages, 45 Bleecker Theatre, The Ohio Theatre, The Brooklyn Lyceum and American Place Theatre. His children's musical, NIGHT OF THE BUTTERFLY, has been declared "a winning original musical!" by TimeOut Kids, and had an extended Off-Broadway run. He was the recipient of the 2010 Brooklyn Arts Council Grant for his one-man musical THE LEGEND OF ICHABOD CRANE (Halloween Pick - Village Voice) which he continues to tour around the city. At Writopia, six of Dan's students have won "Best Play" in Stephen Sondheim's 2008, 2009, and 2010 Write a Play! contests, and many others were named finalists or won honorable mentions. A graduate of NYU, Dan's screenplays include Old Days, directed by Matt Shapiro and starring Brad Oscar (Tony Nomination, The Producers) and Mary Beth Piel (Dawson's Creek) and Bodybuilder Island, directed by Matthew Kliegman. Dan has been a final committee judge for the Philadelphia Young Playwrights Festival for four years (this coming summer will be his fifth). Dan's play Be Here Now won this festival and was a finalist in Stephen Sondheim's National Playwriting Competition.

• We are so very excited to be doing a staged reading of your new play Dead Special Crabs as part of our “Winks” season. Can you give us a bit of a synopsis of the play and provide some insight in terms of what inspired it?

DEAD SPECIAL CRABS is a road trip play--my favorite genre--that follows Loomer as he and his best friend June drive from Maine to Florida in order to deliver their vehicle, a brand new tan corolla, to his sister Amy for her wedding. Meanwhile, Loomer’s Aunt Missy, a-feared that Loomer will get all the credit for the gift, hires Detective Barney Horntub to track Loomer down. All of this with a serial killer on the loose, the play is a lot of fun. 

The previous play I had written was about cancer, transgenderism, and how God factors into all of that and I think I wanted to write something fun. I had just read David Lindsay-Abaire’s RABBIT HOLE, which I loved, and was told that he also wrote some wacky stuff, so I literally read the first page of his play A DEVIL INSIDE and put the book down and said out loud (and on the toilet, that’s where I do my reading) “I want to write like this.” And so, while I was in Julian Sheppard’s playwriting class in 2010, I started bringing in pages that were simply nuts and the joy of making the same group of people laugh and gasp each week pushed me to keep making it crazier and crazier.

• When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? What made you start writing plays?

My mother had these 2nd edition Wizard of Oz books with wonderful illustrations inside and when I was three I used to climb to the top of the bookshelf and tear out the pictures to make my own books. So from an early age I was already plagiarizing. 

Theatre was big in my family. My father was a part time clown and we used to listen to old radio programs of vaudeville acts and I remember the first play I ever wrote was at my camp, which was a very sportsy camp, but every year the oldest bunk did a little skit. I turned that into an hour long musical--and because I stole from pretty much every vaudeville act that I could find--it was hilarious and so at 13 or 14, the camp hired me to write plays for them each year, for the next few years.

Looking now at what I’ve said, I’m suddenly self-conscious of how much my work has been derived from others. But I think, with comedy in particular, you are coming out of a tradition, and so stealing is the way you learn. Hopefully people will steal from me one day. 

• Who or what has been your biggest influence as a writer? What inspires you to get to the page?

I love theatre that gets us out of our seats. My first plays that were produced in New York were for children where that has to be part of the aesthetic because kids literally will stand up and walk on the stage. But as I am able to write for older audiences, I think the reason we come to the theatre is to play--it’s called a PLAY for godsakes. So people who instill that wonder in us--David Lindsay Abaire, Sarah Ruhl, Tony Kushner, Lisa Kron, Anna Deveare Smith--people who welcome us into the theatre and play with us and make us think and feel and love and hate and be alive, that’s what I look forward to.

Is Dead Special Crabs an important play? Does it tackle any big issues? Probably not, but it’s a helluva lot of fun and makes us feel like kids again and I truly believe that comedy has that power to make us happy like happy kids. And if we could all be like that for two hours, plus the drink after the show, I don’t know, maybe we could end homelessness, or something.

• In terms of your creative process, do you have a particular ritual when it comes to writing? If so, can you share it with us?

I think my ritual is procrastination. I need about four hours to really write because I need about two hours to not write. I’m trying to get better, but what can you do with all this internet and television.

I do yoga before I write, and I really only write in the mornings. The writing I do in the late afternoons and evenings is--as my high school English teacher said of my final paper on Jane Austen in 12th grade--”Less than good. And in many places, not good, or, bad.”

• You’ve been working for some time now with Writopia Lab. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Rebecca Wallace-Segall, who is my sister-from-another-mister, founded Writopia Lab, a creative writing workshop for kids, in 2007. When it started, it was in her studio apartment on the upper west side, and I was her one employee. It’s grown to a national organization serving thousands of kids each year (this year, we’ve partnered with the New York Public Library, serving even more kids!). When it began, most of the kids were writing memoirs and short stories, and I, as a playwright, wanted them to write plays. So little by little, I got a few plays out of the kids and soon we had about twenty plays, so in 2009, I put together a two night festival of the plays, directed them all and it was a lot of fun. Four years later, with the aid of David Letterman’s production house Worldwide Pants, the Mellam Foundation and now Playscripts as sponsors, the Worldwide Plays Festival produces about a 100 plays each year written by kids as young as 5 and as old as 18. It’s really exciting how much its grown, and though I have stepped down as Artistic Director while in grad school, I am still very much involved, dramaturging the plays and working with the kids. Teaching is a very sacred profession and an opportunity for artists to really do good in the world and I’m so thankful for Writopia Lab for both the kids its serves, as well as what its done for me as an artist and and as a human being.

• Can you tell us about any additional projects you are working on right now? 

Well, I had my first Off-Bway show, TAR BABY, open this past January, which I wrote with Desiree Burch. Reviews and audience responses were great so I know there’s talk of a future life for that show. I’m also currently adapting the gorgeous best-selling novel “We The Animals” by Justin Torres with Jeremiah Zagar for the screen. And like I mentioned before, as I am in grad school, I am working on a musical called HOMOS! AS THE WORLD IS ENDING! : A disaster musical, bitch. The most recent part, of which, Wide Eyed’s own Kristin Skye Hoffmann is directing. She’s the bomb, ain’t she?

Sam Byron's ANIMALS to be published by Indie Theater Now

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Wide Eyed Productions would like to extend hearty congratulations and a virtual high five to Animals playwright Sam Byron. nytheatre.com’s Indie Theater Now will be publishing Byron’s Animals as part of their Best of FringeNYC 2012 Collection, which will feature 27 plays produced at FringeNYC this year. Having seen many of these on stage over the last couple of weeks, we know he will be in great company. Congratulations, Sam, and to all of the other playwrights receiving this honor!

Meet the Playwright: Sam Byron (ANIMALS)

Sam Byron is a playwright based in New York. His plays include A Substitute for Margo (Out of the Ashes Theatre Co., Chicago, IL), The Rock and the Bird (NoBucks Theater, Ithaca, NY), Debt (Horse Trade Theater, New York City, and Dillingham Center for Performing Arts, Ithaca, NY), Brooklyn Vacancies (finalist, New Works Program at T. Schreiber Studio, New York City), Static (finalist, HotCity Theater’s Greenhouse Festival, St. Louis), and Animals (Manhattan Repertory Theatre, New York City). He has written numerous short plays, including 529 (Manhattan Theatre Source), Famous Dick (UglyRhino Productions), and How to Field Dress a Unicorn (Billy & Co.). He has worked in the literary offices of both the Atlantic Theater Company and the Public Theater, and is currently pursuing an MFA in Playwriting from The New School in New York City. He is the 2012 recipient of the New School for Drama’s Steinberg New Playwrights Fellowship.

• We are so very excited to be staging your play Animals for the New York International Fringe Festival this year. Can you give us a bit of a synopsis of the play and provide some insight in terms of what inspired it?

A group of twenty-somethings attend an unofficial high school reunion. The house party, thrown by a former member of the “popular crowd,” becomes the backdrop for a myriad of sexual encounters both pleasurable and violent.

The inspiration for the play came from a break-up I went through about four years ago. I wanted to write about the frustrating chasm that exists between men and women when it comes to love and sex. As I explored this idea—and aged four years, loving and losing more along the way—the play found its way into more complex territory. The piece became about growing older, about realizing who your true friends are, and about the fallibility of your emotions when you are “in love.”

• When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? What made you start writing plays?

I believe that all writers have some thing, some secret they hope to uncover, recover, understand, ignore, or some such thing. I certainly have one or two internal wounds that I think compel me to write, but the answer to the question “why?” is much simpler than some heartbreaking account of my personal life. I write because I have to. I know this because sometimes I don’t want to. Sometimes writing feels like the hardest thing I could do, but I do it anyway. I write because I have to understand what goes on around me and what goes on within me.

Playwriting, more than novel-writing or poetry, is the art of communication. A play does not exist without collaboration and compromise. A novel falls in the forest and makes a noise whether someone hears it or not, but a play is a citizen of the world around us. It demands to be acknowledged because, without its fellow citizens, it is nothing. I write plays because I am most interested in participating in that citizenship.

• Who or what has been your biggest influence as a writer? What inspires you to get to the page?

Those are two very different questions. What gets me to the page are the every day idiosyncracies of human existence. I read recently about an actress rescued from the Titanic who then went off right away and starred in a movie about her experiences. She knew immediately that her trauma was marketable. I read that and I think, “That’s the world’s first reality TV star! There’s a play in there!”

In terms of influences, it’s hard to really say. I read all the time and feel like I take something from all of it. Sam Shepard taught me that I can do whatever I want on stage. He was really the first playwright I read and thought, “Wow. I want to do that.”

• In terms of your creative process, do you have a particular ritual when it comes to writing? If so, can you share it with us?

I can’t wear shoes and write at the same time. I will if I have to, but God help the poor soul that has to decipher the scribbles that come from that.

• I believe you obtained your MFA in Playwrighting from The New School. Is this also where you met Kristin Skye Hoffmann, the director for this production? Can you tell us a bit about that working relationship?

Kristin and I just completed the first third of our MFA track at the New School. She directed the first piece I wrote, which was a three-page site-specific play called SVP. We had known each other for about two months, and we set out around the West Village scouting locations with Kristin feeding me ideas to keep my brain storming. My name is on that script, but I couldn’t have done it without her.

The final scene of that play took place in the courtyard of a building on the corner of Charles St.and the West Side Highway. We were rehearsing there one day when this big black SUV pulled up and Martha Stewart got out. Stunned, we watched her breeze by us and into the building. Two seconds later we were ejected from the premises and I was rewriting the scene for a stoop up the block. I thought, if Martha Stewart wants to stop us, Kristin and I must be doing something right.

• Can you tell us about any additional projects you are working on right now?

I have a few projects in the works. The first is the next Halloween, site-specific experience for UglyRhino Productions at the Brooklyn Lyceum. Following the success of last year’s CENTRALIA, I am developing a pseudo-murder mystery involving crazy occult ritual suicide in 1970s Gowanus.

I will also be developing a play under the tutelage of Jon Robin Baitz over the coming year about a congregation of Jews in search of a Rabbi and a young woman who is forced to rediscover her faith when she’s called upon to help in place of her dying father.

Mike Aguirre's "Somewhere in this Favor'd Land" - 5/19 @ 6pm

Mike Aguirre is a graduate from Indiana University with a B.A. in Theatre and English.  A suburban Chicago native, Mike has worked with the Windy City Players, First Folio, Steppenwolf, The Wilma Theater (Philadelphia), and the Hexagon Theatre (South Africa).  Since arriving in New York, he’s worked with The Pearl Theatre (City Center), Wide Eyed Productions, has taken classes and worked with Anne Phelan, John Grabowski, and Chelsea Rep and Lab, and is a company member with Rising Sun.

• Your play Somewhere in this Favor’d Land will be performed as a part of our Dark Nights series this week at the Richmond Shepard Theatre. Can you tell us about what inspired it?

I’ve always wanted to write an homage to baseball.  I’ve always wanted to write an homage to Wilder’s Our Town.  I think the play is a combination of the two (but don’t let those two subjects turn you away from the show!)  At its heart is a story about change in America and how change shapes a conservative town, a father and son.

• You are part of Wide Eyed’s very first Apprentice Playwrights Program. Can you tell us a little bit about what the process has been like?

At the beginning of the process, I wrote a very different play that… I just didn’t think it worked for many reasons, so it’s had more changes that I can account for since the early stages of the idea.  But that’s been the beauty of the process with Wide Eyed.  I started in the theatre as an actor, and any actor will tell you that you never get it right at the first rehearsal.  It takes days, weeks, months.  You grow with a character even during performances, and I am learning that the same is true with writing a script.  Half the battle is getting it down on paper.  Then it goes through so many steps listening to actors and directors interpret your work, seeing what moments are good and more importantly, what moments need to be thrown away.  I remember reading an article about John Guare where he says that playwriting is a ‘blood sport’.  You have to be brutal with what stays and what goes, what moments are honest and what are contrived.  I’m very new to playwriting and it’s something I’m still learning how to do.  Tim Butterfield, the Artistic Director of Wide Eyed and the director for the play, is an expert leading a writer through the process, so it’s been a challenging but fulfilling one, and I’m grateful that there are programs like Wide Eyed’s Apprenticeship which invest the necessary time it takes in developing a script.

• When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? What made you start writing plays?

I hate admitting this, but I think I had this grand idea of writing plays that I could act in after I was tired of auditioning and auditioning, begging people to put me in their shows.  It was selfish, at first.  But once I began studying the structure, taking classes, having discussions with other professionals and learning to appreciate this rich tradition of story-telling, I fell in love with it.

• Who or what has been your biggest influence as a writer? What inspires you to get to the page?

Seeing any productions are the biggest influence: seeing what’s out there, what creative things are being done, and what I can do to add to it always gets my mind going and gets me motivated. Also, my parents used to tell my brother and I stories when we were very young.  They would make them up on the spot at bedtime, and they would always leave a cliffhanger of an ending for the following night.  Their story-telling and creativity probably had the biggest impact on pursuing a life in the arts.

• In terms of your creative process, do you have a particular ritual when it comes to writing? If so, can you share it with us?

A glass of wine or a few beers always help. I also don’t own a computer, so I suppose part of the ritual is stealing my girlfriend’s laptop to do some writing (Thanks, Ali)!

• Can you tell us about any other projects you’re working on right now?

A one-act I wrote entitled Almost a Fantasy has been accepted into the NY Fringe Festival this summer.  It’s being produced by Chelsea Rep and Lab and Rumination Theatre, and it’ll be very exciting to get back into a rehearsal room this summer.  It opens in August.  Hope everyone can come see it!

Liz Magee's "The Attendant" - 5/18 @ 6pm

Liz Magee recently received a BA in Theatre Arts with concentrations in Performance and Writing for the Stage from Marymount Manhattan College. Her short play, If You See Something, Say Something won Manhattan Rep’s Fall One-Act Competition and was a semi-finalist in the Riant Theatre’s Strawberry One-Act Festival. While at Marymount, she was head writer of the sketch group “Comedy Schmomedy,” received the award for ‘Best TV Script’ for her spec script of Modern Family, and was the recipient of the Gold Key for Academic Excellence for Writing for the Stage.

• Your play The Attendant will be performed as a part of our Dark Nights series this week at the Richmond Shepard Theatre (Thursday, May 18 @ 6pm - see Facebook). Can you tell us about what inspired it?

A few years ago, while still a student at Marymount Manhattan College, I had written the beginnings of a play that took place strictly within a bathroom at a high school. I wasn’t happy with what became of that piece — with the exception of the I-still-find-clever title “Stalling”. But I remained intrigued with the concept of setting a play within a restroom of sorts. At the moment, I find I am prone to first establishing a consistent setting — usually a confined space — and then I begin to explore potential characters and circumstances that the particular space calls for. 

• You are part of Wide Eyed’s very first Apprentice Playwrights Program. Can you tell us a little bit about what the process has been like?

This program has given me the greatest gift a young, distracted writer could ask for: DEADLINES.  Throughout the past few months, we would meet to workshop our work, which meant I needed to bring in something to workshop. In addition to this, the community that formed has been invaluable to me. Not only is it always exciting to work with new people, but to have feedback sessions with new WRITERS was terribly exciting for me. I must admit, I have learned a great deal from each writer involved and without this program, The Attendant might have still been on the to do list. Thanks Tim!

• I’m under the impression that you have worked before with Michael Kinnan, your director for this staged reading of The Attendant. Can you tell us a little about that working relationship?

Oh, where do I begin? Well, Michael and I both attended Marymount, where we participated in a Playwright / Director / Actor workshop. I was assigned a group of actors and a director to specifically write a piece for, that director being Michael. You could say we just ‘clicked’. A natural symbiotic relationship was born and is still developing. We continue to serve as a source of support and encouragement for one another as well as a source of critique and challenge. We are constantly learning from each other while growing into these roles of director and playwright through our frequent collaborations. Plus, we both love Mad Men.  

• You were kind enough to answer some questions earlier on your creative process as your monologue, Jeans, was being performed in our recent production of A Girl Wrote It. Now that the show is over, do you have any additional thoughts on that piece?

This was a particularly scary experience for me at first. I had written Jeans during a ‘free write’ session during a playwriting class over a year ago. Meaning, it was written with no intention of being performed. I submitted the piece on a whim and I am so glad I did! It has been an immensely encouraging experience to have such talented ladies (Carly Knight under the direction of Kristin Skye Hoffmann) bring life to a piece that may have otherwise been neglected. There were many layers of humor and intimacy that I hadn’t even recognized within the piece until these gals got their hands on it. 

• Can you tell us about any additional projects you’re working on right now?

Hm. I suppose it’s time to start writing a new play, eh? I will say that my next play is likely to be another female-centric piece. This is not because I am especially fanatic about women’s issues, but I entered college as an actress, where the female to male ratio was 5:1. I dream of a future where there is more material for a scene study class of mostly women besides that scene between Claire and Catherine in Proof. Gotta represent.

Doug Williams's "Now I am a Wrecking Ball" - 5/17 @ 6pm

 

Douglas Williams is a Silver Award Winner from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. His plays include The Death and Life of Uncle Gene, Shitheads, and Now I am a Wrecking Ball, which is being developed with the support of Wide Eyed Productions. His play P.E. was published in the March issue of The Inciting Incident. He lives in Brooklyn with his girlfriend, Sarah. 

• Your play Now I am a Wrecking Ball will be performed as a part of our Dark Nights series this week at the Richmond Shepard Theatre (Thursday, May 17 @ 6pm - see Facebook). Can you tell us about what inspired it? 

I think it’s interesting when people get to be a part of documenting someone’s life, especially an artist--the way they can sort of glorify everything they did. There is a great documentary about Stanley Kubrick called A Life In Pictures. It’s basically three hours of everyone discussing and dissecting his genius. I love Stanley Kubrick's work and I do think he was a genius, but while he was filming The Shining he was a real jerk to Shelley Duval. They have footage of it. Years later, in this documentary about Kubrick, Shelley Duval goes into how it was just a part of his process, how it was just a part of who he was a director. She totally lets him off the hook. I think that kind of thing happens pretty often in these sort of retrospective programs. So I wanted to look at that. Sort of glorifying someone who wasn’t that great of a person.

• You are part of Wide Eyed’s very first Apprentice Playwrights Program. Can you tell us a little bit about what the process has been like? 

It’s been great. It’s the first writers group I’ve been a part of and I’m really so proud of the work everyone’s been doing. It’s pushed me to finish this play, I don’t think it would have gotten written otherwise so I’ll always be thankful for that. If anything, I think the program is too short. I wish I could continue on with this group for another year or so. 

• When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? What made you start writing plays? 

Well I grew up making films so I never really thought of myself as solely a writer, I just wrote screenplays so that I could film them. When I was at Temple, I took this incredible class with Ed Sobel called American Playwrights. We read plays like True West and Topdog / Underdog. I remember realizing how dangerous theatre can be, in a way that film wasn't for me at the time. I wrote a play that semester that was really bad, but that was sort of how it started. 

• Who or what has been your biggest influence as a writer? What inspires you to get to the page? 

There are lots of people who inspire me and not all of them are writers. The things that inspire me directly are my friends, my family, my girlfriend, things that happen to me, things I see. Writing is fun because it makes you pay more attention to things. You can see something and store it away. It’s not like, “Oh I am now being inspired;” it’s a lot more fun than that. 

• In terms of your creative process, do you have a particular ritual when it comes to writing? If so, can you share it with us? 

Not really. I try to write at least two pages everyday and when I get that free time always fluctuates. I like to write at night. During the day I feel like I should be outside or paying bills or cleaning my apartment. At night everything kind of calms down, I can sit down and focus a little more. 

• Can you tell us about any other projects you’re working on right now? 

I'm working on a one-act called The They Committee for the theatre company I grew up with. The Stonington Players do this one-act festival every year, and I always try to write one for it. It's fun because they like big casts because they have so many people eager to be a part of the festival--it gives me a chance to write in a different style. I'm also working on two other full lengths at the moment. After this reading I'm planning on stepping away from the project for a little while and then coming back to it with fresh eyes in a few weeks. It's been a long process but there is still a lot of work I plan on putting into the play. 

Amy Gijsbers van Wijk's "Second Skin" - 5/16 @ 6pm

Amy Gijsbers van Wijk is entering her junior year at the Macaulay Honors College at Brooklyn College (CUNY). She was born and raised in Houston, TX before moving to New York City on the artistic-pilgrimage, and for college. She is majoring in Theatrical Authorship Studies, a self-designed interdisciplinary program (of playwriting, drama history, and theatre training) and being mentored by Erin Courtney and Mary Beth Easley. Second Skin is her first full-length play, but will surely not be her last. Her previous works include Blasphemy, and The Bystander Effect, which were performed in aWe Creative Group’s “24 HourPlayFun,” a twenty-four hour playwriting/acting event. She has also co-written a musical performed at Macaulay, Error 404!, about two students who get trapped in the Internet. Check out her blog, Diary of a Young Playwright.

• Your play Second Skin will be performed as a part of our Dark Nights series this week at the Richmond Shepard Theatre (Wednesday, May 16th at 6pm - see Facebook). Can you tell us about what inspired it?

The origin of my idea kind of rids the play of its mystery, but. . .(pausing for mystery) I was hanging out with some friends, and a newly-introduced friend-of-a-friend asked me, “If I was in one of your plays, what would my name be?” That’s where I got the name of the main male role, Marc. He said, “What would my story be?” and the main plot of the play, of a plastic surgeon who performs reconstructive surgery on his wife after she has a car accident, just popped into my head.

• You are part of Wide Eyed’s very first Apprentice Playwrights Program. Can you tell us a little bit about what the process has been like?

The process was a lot of fun! So, we [myself and the other interns] were chosen through an interview and selection process: writing sample, resume, and interview. Then, we met up at the end of January with ideas for a play, and kept meeting at various levels of progress: an outline, the first five pages, the first fifteen, and so on every three weeks until we finished.

On a more detailed level, our meetings would last about three hours, and as we had more pages to turn in they’d last almost all of an afternoon, into an evening. We’d read through each new part, having each one of us read the characters and stage directions. Then, we would go through this really nice feedback process: first, what we liked about the play. Then, did the playwright have any questions for the others? Then, did the others have any questions for the playwright? It was a great process. Tim, the Artistic Director, had it organized so nicely.

After it was written, we had a reading process with a bunch of actors from Wide Eyed and the New School and Brooklyn College, and various other connections. From that, we asked actors to be involved, and Tim helped us find directors or we could ask someone we knew. Then, the rehearsal process was more up to us. [Wide Eyed's resident playwright] Laura Maria Censabella did, however, read each of our scripts and/or see our readings, and give us feedback as well.

All in all, it was a great process.

• When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? What made you start writing plays?

I’d done writing variously since I was in middle school. I didn’t realize I could be a writer (I’d just won an award) until the end of middle school, and I spent the following three years trying to write short stories and poems – more poems than anything.

When I was a freshman, Macaulay Honors College collaborated with aWe Creative Group for one of the “24 Hour PlayFun” events, and I wrote a play overnight (a ten minute play). That was when I realized I could write a play, because I never had finished one before then, and that I also loved the theatrical process. I kept writing plays after that, and I still am. It’s both the form that challenges me the most and I feel the most comfortable in – fiction always felt like walking uphill, 18 miles in the snow; and while I love poetry, and do still write it and find my work highly influenced by poetry and poetic style, I never had the desire to pursue it seriously. Playwriting combined my interest in acting and theatre, which I had participated in growing up, and my love of making up stories and characters in my head.

• Who or what has been your biggest influence as a writer? What inspires you to get to the page?

It’s hard to pinpoint a single influence, because I feel that as a writer I’m extremely susceptible to everything around me as a source. Sometimes I just hear lines, or think lines, to myself (usually when I’m walking or talking to people), or sometimes I’ll hear someone deliver a story or line and I’ll copy it down. I eavesdrop a lot, that’s inspiring. Or if I’m people-watching, I try to think, “What makes those people interesting? What do they remind me of? Who could I make them” and go from there. I also think it might be the fear that not-writing makes me not-a-writer that’s partially inspiring.

• In terms of your creative process, do you have a particular ritual when it comes to writing? If so, can you share it with us?

As a college student, my writing mantra tends to be, “Write when you should be doing something else,” or “Write when you can.” I had a New Year’s Resolution to write everyday . . . I haven’t been doing too well at that.

I do like to start writing by hand for the first draft, but I find that I do it less in playwriting because I’m often writing in a rushed moment, or towards a page count.

• Can you tell us about any other projects you’re working on right now?

I started working on a play as part of a playwriting course I’m taking with Benjamin Gassman, and that’s developed into something I’m kind of in love with at the moment. It’s called Broken Eggs: a play. I also may be writing another musical as part of Macaulay’s SING! event, where students team up on the campuses and write, direct, and perform a thirty-minute musical, but that won’t be until September or October.

A Girl Wrote It: Heather Lynn MacDonald, Playwright

Heather Lynn MacDonald Originally from New Hampshire, Heather currently lives in Harlem with her husband, Anuj Shah. Her plays have been produced and developed by The New Group, Naked Angels, A.R.T. Theatre Institute, Summer Play Festival, Page 73 Productions, Atlantic Theater Company, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Hangar Theatre, and The New York International Fringe Festival. She is the recipient of a NYSCA Individual Artist grant and NYFA fellowship; additional honors include residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Page 73, and the Orchard Project. Her play The Givers is a 2012 O'Neill Theater Conference semifinalist. Heather is a former member of Page 73′s Interstate 73 Writers Group. She holds a MFA from Columbia University where she received the Brander Matthews Fellowship, and a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. 

• Your one-act, Early Michigan, will be performed as a part of our upcoming production of A Girl Wrote It. Can you tell us about what inspired it? 

I’ve lived in New York for nearly twenty years. During that time, many of my friends left New York to either pursue their art in another city/town, or to pursue another career altogether. When you’re in your 20’s, you think “well, they must not have wanted it that badly.” When you’re in your 30’s, you think “oh my god, I’m in my 30’s and I have no actual profession I can put on my LinkedIn profile, let alone own a home or thought about starting a family.” So you look around at all your friends who left New York and have those things, and you panic. At least I did. Still do. 

I guess this is my way of saying this play is about that moment in life where you begin to assess where you’re at, what you have, and the sacrifices you’ve made to get there. While the story centers around four friends at varying stages of professional and personal growth, the play is really about assessing my relationship with New York. 

• Who or what has been your biggest influence as a writer? What inspires you to get to the page? 

My biggest influence as a writer is clichéd, but true: Caryl Churchill. While our styles are dramatically different, she helped me understand that writing can be lyrical without being cloying, dangerous without being sensational, historical without being musty, and political without being dogmatic. And she’s a girl – er, woman. 

• In terms of your creative process, do you have a particular ritual when it comes to writing? If so, can you share it with us? 

Sadly, no. I’m terrible with establishing routines or a disciplined approach to writing. For the most part, I write when I feel it. But as any writer will tell you, inspiration is fleeting and completely unreliable, which sucks for someone with no discipline. Attending retreats has been the best way for me to be productive - I’d go every year if I could. A friend recently sent me an app that forces you to write a certain amount of time each day. I should probably get it. 

• I read somewhere that you grew up in rural New Hampshire near Lake Winnipesauke. Did you always want to live in New York? How would you say these experiences have shaped you as a writer? 

Yep, I always knew I wanted to live in New York. As a theater dork growing up in the country, there really wasn’t any other option in my mind. Now, nearly twenty years later, I’m starting to believe maybe there is a world outside of New York… 

• Can you tell us about any other projects you’re working on right now? 

I’ve been working on a play called Neocomrade about the birth of the neoconservative movement in the U.S. It’s a topic I’m fascinated by, and this is my attempt to understand its evolution from a group of Depression-era left-wing radicals to the present-day architects of the war(s) in Iraq. My current task is sharpening its focus – there are too many juicy characters and not enough stage time, so I’m going to have to get serious with the delete button.

A Girl Wrote It: Deirdre O'Connor, Playwright

Deirdre O’Connor’s full-length plays include Jailbait, and Assisted Living.  Her plays have been produced or developed with The Cherry Lane Theatre, Naked Angels, St. Ann’s Warehouse, The Lark, The Playwrights Foundation, and Profiles Theatre, among others.  Deirdre was a 2008 Cherry Lane Mentor Project Fellow mentored by Michael Weller.  Deirdre was a 2008-2009 Lark Playwrights Workshop Fellow.  Deirdre’s television work includes Pearl, one of the short films in Lifetime’s FIVE (Writers Guild Award Nomination), and The Electric Company on PBS (Emmy Award).  Deirdre is a graduate of Hampshire College, and Columbia University's MFA Playwriting program where she was the recipient of the John Golden Playwriting Award. 

• Your one-act, Penicillin, will be performed as a part of our upcoming production of A Girl Wrote It. Can you tell us about what inspired it? 

Oh dear.  Well, it was NOT inspired by personal experience.  Let’s just be clear about that. I was teaching a playwriting class to high school students and I gave them an assignment to write a play set in a waiting room.  And they all wrote cancer plays.  So I decided to give myself the same challenge and see if I could flip the situation on its head. Take what should be a melodrama and make it a comedy.  Take what should be the end of a relationship and find a way to make it the beginning. And Penicillin is what I came up with. 

• When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? What inspired you to start writing plays? 

I always loved writing.  Growing up I wrote a lot of short stories and bad poetry.  But my writing was always about ninety percent dialogue.  I think it’s because I grew up in a big Irish family that valued good dinner table conversation above all else.  So I have always had a lot of lively voices in my head.  And then in my first year of college I took a playwriting course and it was just a natural fit for me. 

• Who or what has been your biggest influence as a writer? What gets you to the page on difficult days? 

In grad school I studied with Eduardo Machado and Frank Pugliese, two amazing writers who had a big impact on me.  And then a few years ago I was mentored by the fantastic Michael Weller as part of the Cherry Lane Mentor Project.  Michael is a god among men, I learn from him just by sitting in the audience of one of his plays.  But I’m equally influenced by my amazing playwright friends who read my early drafts and fight about plays with me.  Heather Lynn MacDonald is an awesome person to argue about theatre with. 

And as for difficult days… if I have a story I feel compelled to write, I will write it.  But on some difficult days I don’t sit down to my computer at all.  I go for a walk or clean my apartment.  It’s a huge misconception that writing is only the process of putting pen to paper.  Sometimes I have my biggest breakthroughs just standing in the middle of my kitchen staring at my refrigerator. 

• In terms of your creative process, do you have a particular ritual or schedule when it comes to writing? If so, can you share it with us? 

Well, I never used to.  But after my son was born I had to create one for myself.  I have an office nearby my home with a tiny desk and a little window that looks out on a beautiful garden.  I go there for six hours a day, pour myself a cup of coffee, disconnect my internet, and just write.  I always worked best with a deadline, and getting home to the baby is a pretty great daily deadline. 

• Your play Assisted Living just completed its world premiere at the Profiles Theatre in Chicago, where your play Jailbait also enjoyed a run the previous year. How would you say the theatrical scene in Chicago differs these days from that of New York?  

Chicago and New York are both amazing theatre towns.  I think the big difference is that it feels like there is a greater balance in Chicago between the big theatres and all the amazing little store-front performance spaces.  Chicago critics and audiences really seem to value the voices and contributions of each of these disparate groups.  Whereas in New York, it can be harder for emerging theatre artists to get their work seen by a wider audience. 

• Can you tell us about any other projects you’re working on right now? 

For the past year I’ve been focusing on film and television projects.  Which has been really fun, but I’m looking forward to getting back to playwriting.  I have an idea for a new play that I’m excited to write, so I’m going to carve out some time to do that soon.

A Girl Wrote It: Erin Singleton, Playwright

Erin Singleton performs weekly at The People’s Improv Theater with the indie team Student Driver. She also coaches improv. Erin received her BFA in Theatre from Stephens College in Columbia, MO. She has acted in many plays regionally and in NYC, as well as been in several shorts, including one with J.B. Smoove. For funzies, she likes to produce shot by shot recreations of 80's music videos with Student Driver. Check out their version of Wham’s Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go on Funny or Die.

• Your monologue, Bologna Sandwiches, will be performed as a part of our upcoming production of A Girl Wrote It. Can you tell us about what inspired it? 

I wanted to write about something a character would have trouble admitting to anyone, especially herself, while keeping that vulnerability veiled with humor. I know a lot of women who have felt similarly to this character – it’s usually right before they start feeling like an adult for the first time.

• How did you first get involved in theatre? When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? What made you want to start writing plays? 

I grew up living and breathing basketball (believe it or not). I suffered a back injury in high school that forced me out of the game and left me sulking on my mom’s couch. She was anxious for me to find something, anything else to do, so she bought me season tickets to the Landers Theatre, a beautiful theater an hour from our home. I saw my first play when I was fifteen. I was mesmerized. The following season I played Juliet at that same theater. I studied every aspect of theatre in college, I like crafting a story from every angle. When I got into live comedy a couple years ago, writing seemed like the natural next step. I’m a newbie to the writer world.

• Who or what has been your biggest influence as a writer? What inspires you to get to the page?

Like any woman in comedy right now, I love Tina Fey. I will gobble up anything Aaron Sorkin writes. I love writers who strive to give every character integrity, and I think Sorkin is one of the best examples of that. My friends I do improv with are always inspiring me in every way. However, the person who inspires/encourages me the most is my husband. Having someone who believes in your smarts and your talents who also happens to sleep next to you is pretty awesome.

• In terms of your creative process, do you have a particular ritual when it comes to writing? If so, can you share it with us?

No, not really. I’m still figuring out my process. Right now I start with a want or feeling to communicate. I get that down on paper in all its vague glory, then lots of rewriting and refining! 

• I read somewhere that – in addition to writing – you regularly perform improv and sketch comedy at The PIT (People’s Improv Theatre). How would you say that experience has contributed to your work as a writer?

Tremendously! Improv is writing on your feet. I do longform improv, which means we are basically creating a 20-25 minute play in front of an audience. Improv teaches me economy of language. It opens me up to my impulses. It demonstrates how rewarding it can be for an audience to see something from earlier in the show brought back throughout a piece when you least expect it. I could go on and on (this “economy of language” thing is an ongoing challenge for me). As for sketch, it allows me to explore non-realistic worlds. My sense of humor can be a little looney toons, and sketch celebrates that.

• Can you tell us about any other projects you’re working on right now? 

I recently wrote an essay titled Paris Hilton Wears a Burqa. I’d love to expand that into something more. You can catch my indie improv team, Student Driver, every Sunday at 7pm at The People’s Improv Theater. You can also check The PIT’s website for details on the Indie-pendence Day festival we host.

A Girl Wrote It: Laura Maria Censabella, Playwright

Laura Maria Censabella’s plays have been produced or workshopped by The Philadelphia Festival Theatre for New Plays, The Women's Project & Productions, The Working Theatre, Interact Theatre in L.A., the American Living Room Series at The Ohio, the AthenaWorks Marathon, the Belmont Italian American Playhouse (which commissioned her play Some Girls), the Pacific Resident Theatre, The Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College, and Ensemble Studio Theatre, where she is a member and runs the professional Playwrights Unit.  Her one act play Interviewing Miss Davis was produced in 2010 in Ensemble Studio Theatre’s One Act Marathon of Plays.  She is currently working on an EST/Sloan Foundation Commission to write a new science-based, full-length play.  Her children’s musical O’Sullivan Stew, written with composer Frank Cuthbert, was produced in 2010 by Greene Arts Foundation and an abridged version toured the NYC public libraries under the auspices of Urban Stages.  Her new children’s musical commission from Urban Stages The Last Pine Tree on Eagle Mountain, (also written with Frank Cuthbert) will begin touring the NYC libraries in April.

Ms. Censabella has been awarded three grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts: two in playwriting for Abandoned in Queens and Three Italian Women (a/k/a Carla Cooks The War), and The Geri Ashur Award in Screenwriting for her original screenplay Truly Mary.  Truly Mary was subsequently developed at The New Harmony Project with director Angelo Pizzo and producer Michael London.  She has also been a two-time participant in the O'Neill Playwrights Conference for Abandoned in Queens and Jazz Wives Jazz Lives and has received writing fellowships from Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The New Harmony Project and the O’Neill.  Her short play Posing was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and The Actual Footage won the Tennessee Chapbook Prize for Drama.  Both plays are published in Poems & Plays (Numbers Five and Seven), as is her play Stones Fall, Birds Fly (Number Sixteen).  Her play Interviewing Miss Davis will be published in the St. Petersburg Review this spring.

Ms. Censabella's teaching experience includes the New School for Drama (current), Sarah Lawrence College, the Actors Studio Drama School, Columbia University's School of the Arts, Columbia College's Undergraduate Writing Program, City University's MFA Writing Program, The Sewanee Writers' Conference, and Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia.

She has written the short film adaptation Physics for HBO's Women: Breaking the Rules series, and for two years she wrote for daytime serial television, winning two Emmy Awards.  Her half-hour independent film Last Call (directed by Robert Bailey and starring Jude Ciccolella and Dana Dewes) was an official selection in festivals throughout the world, including the Avignon Film Festival, the Other Venice Film Festival, the Hermosa Shorts Film Festival, the Sedona International Film Festival, the Queens International Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives’ New Works Series, Long Island International Film Expo, Cinema City International Film Festival, and the Breckenridge Film Festival where it won the Best Short Drama Award.  It is released by Cinequest on a compilation DVD entitled Second Sight: Cinequest Favorite Short Films, Volume II and is available on Netflix (search: Second Sight, Vol. 2) or for download on Jaman.

She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Writers Guild of America, East, and the League of Professional Theatre Women.  She received a degree in Philosophy from Yale University.

• You are Wide Eyed’s resident playwright this season. How did that come about? Can you tell us a little about it?

I saw Tim Butterfield’s production of This Is My Gun by Dan Bernitt at the New Voices Festival at the New School for Drama and highly admired it.  I felt that he had penetrated the essence of the play, and gotten moving, specific performances from the actors.  He then told me about Wide Eyed Productions and asked if I had any one acts to submit for their upcoming festival.  The Wide Eyed company responded to the pieces I submitted and selected two for A Girl Wrote It.  Tim then spoke to me about the mentorship program for early career playwrights that Wide Eyed runs and asked if I would act as Playwright in Residence for the company to provide another perspective for those playwrights.

• Our upcoming production of A Girl Wrote It features two of your pieces: Posing and Stones Fall, Birds Fly.  What inspired you to write each of these pieces?

Posing came out of a dream I had where I heard the 19-year-old girl—who is the protagonist of the piece—speaking to me.  She is reminiscent of many of the girls I knew growing up in Queens.  Girls with incredible heart who have big dreams but lack the guidance and support to make those dreams a reality.  Also, girls who have fallen into really bad patterns with men as a way of getting the love and support they so crave.  Tim has told me she reminds him of many of the girls he knew in Arizona, and others have told me that she reminds them of the people they knew where they grew up, so I believe she is an American archetype.

Stones Fall, Birds Fly is inspired by my uncle who grew up on the lower east side and once confessed to me that he believes he is the reincarnation of Leonardo Da Vinci!   For me that’s a metaphor for all of us.  We all long to soar in this world, but gravity is always pulling us back to earth.

• Stones Fall, Birds Fly was performed as part of the Ensemble Studio Theatre Playwrights Unit March Madness Festival 2008. Do you have any thoughts yet on the previous mounting versus this incarnation of your piece?

That was a script-in-hand workshop.  I’m looking forward to seeing a full production with Curzon Dobell who is an actor who is new to me, but whose work excites me.  I’ve admired Sherri Eden Barber’s work as a director for a number of years now and can’t wait to collaborate with her as well.

• When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? What made you want to start writing plays?

I was an undergrad at Yale in the Theater Studies department and wanted to be an actor.  However, when I compared myself with some of the talents in my class—David Hyde Pierce, Bronson Pinchot, Ellen McLaughlin, Kate Udall—I realized I didn’t have what it takes.  I was too self-conscious and the school didn’t give training in how to break out of that.  However, we were all required to take a Collaboration Course where we got to write and direct as well.  Suddenly, when I began writing, that self-consciousness fell away and there was no wall between the audience and me.   I felt utterly free to be who I am and express what I need to express without worrying what anyone else thinks.  I also had a range of experience that was different from my average classmate.  I grew up in a lower middle class immigrant environment, which was a new perspective for them.  In addition, I had taken time off from college and had lived in the Bowery at the tail end of the jazz loft scene, when Keith Haring was still chalk painting on the sidewalk and hard core punk rock was beginning.  I lived right down the street from the jazz club the Tin Palace and CBGB’s.  It was a wild time when the only store on Broadway was Canal Jeans, and it opened my eyes to so much in the world.  Not least, my mother and grandmother are war survivors—my grandmother worked with the partisans in Northern Italy during WWII—and they shared many of their stories.  Additionally, as I grew up I was nurtured by my Aunt Marie who was severely disabled and that gave me another perspective on the world.  My mother also suffered from PTSD from the war.  Perhaps all that is more than enough to create a writer out of anyone!  When I became a writer, I vowed that I wanted to give voice to the people I grew up with—people who have no voice.

• In terms of your creative process, do you have a particular ritual when it comes to writing? If so, can you share it with us?

If I have the time, I love to write a story out as a prose piece first, either a personal essay or a short story.  This allows me to explore the back story and themes first.  Once the back story gets out of my system I can figure out what the present action is and use the themes that I discovered from the prose rendering as my guiding threads.

That’s the ideal situation and I’ve used it for a number of successful pieces.  It’s not always possible to do that though.  For a longer piece, I like to think about it for quite some time and collect notes in a notebook or computer file, whether ideas for scenes, bits of dialogue, research, and/or character detail.  A lot of what I collect ultimately doesn’t wind up in the piece.  At a certain point—and it can take quite a long time—I start to feel a story structure coming on.  This last part, unfortunately, can’t be rushed and lots of times I get impatient and decide to plunge into the story even though I can’t see its broad brushstrokes.  Most of that gets thrown out but those false starts help me see what the play is not, so I’d like to imagine they’re valuable.

Once I have something that I believe has a pulse—and it could be just the initial start of something—I bring it into the Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Playwrights Unit, which is a group that I founded and that I continue to run.  I watch people’s body language to see where they are engaged and that can be just as helpful as any comments that are given.  I also collect the group’s criticisms, and particularly treasure their clarity questions, which tell me where I’ve communicated and where I haven’t.  Generally, the work to be done is all about going deeper, but sometimes it needs a complete restructuring.  If the piece already has a beginning, middle and end, I’ll usually call a director and arrange a private reading with actors and then sort through the Playwrights Units’ comments with the director.  If the piece is just a fragment, I’ll think about which comments seem most right to me and proceed from there.

It’s never a certain process—there’s always groping for the story and its real meaning.  There’s always apprehension about going into uncharted territory, and you have to renew your courage daily to continue to face what you fear most.

• Who or what has been your biggest influence as a writer? What inspires you to get to the page?

My grandmother who lived through and fought against Fascism during World War II.  She was a great storyteller and had phenomenal adventures that she actually lived.  My father who loved theatre so much as a young teenager growing up in Greenwich Village that he would second act Broadway shows or use the money he saved from numerous jobs (he grew up without a father and was quite poor) to see as many plays as possible.  Although I didn’t see a lot of theatre as I grew up in Brooklyn and Queens (by then it had become too expensive), he and I did watch old movies together.  Although he only had a vocational high school degree, we used to sit together and discuss the story.  He was quite astute as to what wasn’t working.  He had the soul of an artist even if he could never get the training he needed.  He always supported the dreams of my brother and me.  There are so many talented, insightful people in this world who don’t get the chances they deserve.

• Can you tell us about other projects you are working on right now? 

I’ve done many drafts of a new one act play called Dumb Bunnies about two scholarship coeds at Yale in the 1970s who decide to pose for the very first Women of the Ivy League issue of Playboy.  It’s a 35-minute study of what happens when intelligence and opportunism collide.  I just finished the third draft of a new one act play called Chicky about the night that Chick Corea comes to perform at the famous New Haven music club Toad’s Place and two young Yale lovers (in a multi-racial relationship) decide to rehabilitate a down and out, alcoholic jazz musical genius.  The play is all about getting him to the club to stage his comeback and the truths the young adults discover about themselves along the way.

I am in the middle of production for a 35-minute children’s musical called The Last Pine Tree on Eagle Mountain.  It was commissioned by Urban Stages’ Outreach and was written with composer/lyricist Frank Cuthbert.  It will tour the New York City public libraries beginning April 4th in honor of Earth Day!

Finally, I have an EST/Sloan Project full length commission to bring science and science-related topics to a wider audience.  My play focuses on the biochemistry of romantic love and currently focuses on an inner city teenager who wanders onto the Columbia University campus, and as a lark, decides to sign up for an experiment in the psychology department.  She winds up changing a professor’s life, and hopefully, he changes hers as well.  We’ll see.