Artistic Statement
I’ve been in the big NYC for two years now. I typically write socio-political absurdist comedies, i.e. Social Darwinism and Conversations with the Dearly Departed. I find humor is my best tactic to bring an audience around to my way of thinking. I believe comedy is often dismissed as trite or simplistic; I find the inverse to be true. A playwright can soft shoe around an audience member who is having a good time, but when you give them the real zinger, they will take it from you for the most part. In comedies they always like you first.Having said that, The Body of Eva Peron and Jill the Ripper are not comedies. Both are loosely inspired by historical events, which have social and/or political ramifications to the current world. Both are small cast shows. It was a hard lesson for me to learn to write within more producible parameters (less characters), but one that seems to be paying off.
Though I have a producer or two interested in optioning a piece, I have no director. The world of theatre may be small but the vocabularies and ideas of what makes good theatre good are infinitely diverse. There is no right answer; there is only the answer that is correct for one individual, at one time.
What I like in a show is heightened theatricality. To me this is what makes theatre, theatre. It is what still brings audiences to watch performers on the boards and sets us apart from the other entertainment mediums. If there is one absolute consistency to my playwriting, it is that fact: to me the world of the play can only exist on stage, and the world of the theatre is the only place to do the story or the audience justice.