God help me find the story in the slush of my life.

All my skills and experiences shape the way I write plays and poetry. Trained from childhood as a classical pianist, I rebelled in college to study acting and everything I could about theater. While acting, I kept playing music and studied under Bill Dixon. In my twenties I played in rock bands, became a mother, and filled journals with poetic fragments: lines and rants with their own cadence, stories caught in momentary bursts of intuition.

I wrote my first play while teaching theater at a New York City public high school (to put food on the table, and healthcare in my pocket). It's about a man who believes Marilyn Monroe faked her death, so he fakes his own to find her.

The musicality of language shapes the voice of my plays and poetry, while womanhood and mothering shape the masks my characters wear. My protagonists are usually trying to survive and overcome the limits of traditional society. At the heart of my stories is the need to be seen and heard after decades of silence, a red thread running through the tapestry of my work.

My work is rooted in a feminine aesthetic and in how gender shapes relationships, implicitly or explicitly, and drives the social behaviors and norms between people and groups. Historical stories come with facts that are hard to dispute, but the real discovery lies in examining a person's sexuality and how it affected the power they wielded over others.

Nothing in writing is arbitrary. Every word, line, and beat is a deliberate choice. As I study the craft and structural choices other writers make, I inch closer to understanding how I make my own. My artistic mission begins with the belief that stories should not be bound by convention.

I write in many styles, including naturalism, epic, and postdramatic structures. But when I met with Lynn Nottage and asked how she would categorize my work, she answered: lyric naturalism.

My goal is to keep learning, to let go, and to get out of my own way as I become my most authentic writing self. I want to immerse myself in learning, to meditate, and to unleash whatever creative imagination lives in my soul, so that I can tell relevant stories.

Thank you for supporting my work while I survive the slush of life.

D

Living in Rananchqua – The End Place – River of High Place

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