What’s your deal? Who are you and what’s your story?
I’m a queer playwright with an outer space obsession. I grew up on Long Island with a beach five minutes from the house that I never went to, yet somehow still spent a good portion of time being battered by the same waves. For college I escaped to the Pioneer Valley in Western Massachusetts where I took an Existentialism class and now I think too much about everything. I especially like to overthink the spatial, temporal, and emotional distance between people and the more mundane: are octopi even from Earth?
What most excites you about working at TAM?
I love being able to look out the Box Office window and see the shop building sets or watch the props rolling across the parking lot into the theater. Sometimes you can even catch a glimpse of an actor on the crossover.
Why Shakespeare (or classic theatre)?
There’s a lot of Shakespeare that I haven’t explored or didn’t really understand when I studied him in college. TAM has given me new perspective on his characters and their motivations andallowed me to understand his work in a different way.
Who is your role model, and why?
I try to have a different role model for each of my interests. My theater artist role models are Sheila Callaghan and Thomas Bradshaw because I never feel that they’re writing for anyone other than themselves. They’re interested in pushing boundaries and I believe we evolve best when we are challenged to leave our comfort zones. I’ve also discovered a host of new women role models since I joined the roller derby team.
There’s nothing better than a group of badass women encouraging each other to build self-confidence. I’m excited for this season at TAM because of the similar themes of championing women and women supporting women.
You can have dinner with any three powerful women in history. Who would you choose and why?
Sylvia Plath, Rosalind Franklin, Simone de Beauvoir. We can rage hard against the patriarchy together and commiserate. We’d eat really spicy food and blame the tears on the heat level.
What is your super power?
Overcoming shyness by being quirky in order to meet new people.
Describe yourself in three alliterative words.
Quirky, queer, quizzical.