ABOUT THINK TWICE DRAMA

Here it is,  a blog site celebrating smart new plays, neglected gems, and beautiful ruins.  A view of the dramatic arts  from a playwright talking theatre.  Stage play confusion can lead to fascination.  Getting lost in the theatre precedes finding your way.  Here is a place for delving into plays and authors and drama topics.  For “getting,” not just forgetting.  For changing the lens of critical thought, finding the hidden text.  Originally from Southern Illinois, I’m a New York-based writer of plays, fiction, and theatre essays—with an M. A. from Hunter College where I studied playwriting with Tina Howe and dramaturgy with Jonathan Kalb.  My thesis “Taking Courage From the Sturm und Drang” received CUNY’s Shuster Award.  As a script analyst, essay writer, and researcher for Theatre for a New Audience, I’ve reported on seventy professionally submitted plays, written essays for TFANA’s 360° Viewfinder Series, and researched the careers of theatre luminaries for the company’s gala tribute film. I’ve served as dramaturg for Toy Box Theatre’s production of Woyzeck.  Short stories of mine have appeared in North American Review, West Branch, Mississippi Valley Review, and other literary magazines.  I’ve authored six full-length plays with the developmental support of Playwrights Circle at Emerging Artist Theatre, Naked Angels, Polaris North, Love Creek Productions, and Times Square Playwrights. My modern take on William Blake’s The Four Zoas (THE 4TH ZOA) was produced by Sparrowhawk.  I am a member of Dramatist’s Guild and New Play Exchange.

As a fiction writer turned playwright, I admire how Anton Chekhov was able to reconfigure himself as primarily a writer of short stories, someone who was accused of just wanting to tell stories from the stage, to the preeminent early modern dramatist.  The rewriting strategy that he employed to transform his early bad play, The Wood Demon, into a great play, Uncle Vanya, was a revelation into how his mind worked and the kind of thinking that goes into rewriting.  I’m excited by the potential for the stage to go beyond the familiar experience of home and office, test the limits of the imagination, astonish the intellect, and instruct the heart.  Nitimur in vetitum (We strive for the forbidden) says Ovid.  I endeavor to create work that could only come from me and yet has the potential to reach others in profound ways. Collaborating with actors and directors and learning how to write in such a way that invites the contribution of other artists is one of the most rewarding aspects of playwriting.  To write a play and to discover later something I didn’t know was there, something only other voices could have brought to the work, makes all the storm and stress of the process worthwhile.