Q: How did you get into playwriting?
A: I’ve always been a storyteller and, from the time I was a young age, figured that writing would play a role in my life. In fact, I hand-wrote my first 100-page novel in the sixth grade. It was a delightfully obvious ripoff of Stephen King’s The Stand but populated with characters from Mortal Kombat.

In any case, I wound my way through creative writing programs in high school and focused on it in college, trying out prose, poetry, and, eventually, playwriting. Theater–as an actor and patron–had always been a passion, as well. I realized that, of all forms of writing, creating action and conflict through dialogue felt most natural.

I went into teaching out of undergrad, and writing took a backseat until I went to grad school for theater education. It was there that I took a theater literature class with Amissa Miller, a new play dramaturg who curated a syllabus that focused on characters living at complex identity intersections. It made me realize why I, a multiracial queer person, often felt like I wasn’t quite telling the stories I wanted to or should be telling. It was a huge lightbulb moment where I discovered my MO as a playwright–to write subtle, nuanced, character-driven stories with universal appeal and themes, but populated with characters navigating eclectic identity crossroads.

Q: When you’re writing, what does an ideal day look like to you?
A: That depends on where I am in the process. I find that, once I get a good idea for a story, I go on a bit of a tear and have to outline or plow through it quickly. Usually I get good ideas when I’m procrastinating doing work for my day job, and I’m stressed out by something not writing related. I will try to really word vomit the first draft onto the page in a few weeks so that I don’t lose the initial impulse that led me to the idea. Once that unformed, strange first draft creature is out in the world, I will buckle down and perhaps spend an hour a day chipping away at it.

Q: What was your initial inspiration for writing Affinity Lunch Minutes, and what fueled you throughout the writing process for your play?
A: This piece is definitely the culmination of my experiences navigating predominantly white institutions (PWIs) in general as a multiracial queer person, and examining the ways I’ve felt both harmed by and complicit in upholding the structures of these institutions. I did work at a Quaker school, but I would say that this play is about white, liberal institutions of all kinds rather than being explicitly based on this one context in which I’ve worked. In the spring of 2020 when I began writing this play, “black@” Instagram pages were popping up all over social media in response to the harms committed against Black and brown students at many PWIs. The plays, managed by Black and brown alum and current students, anonymously called out incidents and patterns at prestigious prep schools and colleges around the country. As I visited the pages connected to especially liberal schools, I noted that the sense of betrayal of those school’s justice-oriented missions were particularly palpable.

Q: Tell us the first four words that come to mind to describe your play.
A: Timely, uncomfortable, open-ended, questioning

Q: Why did you select those four words?
A: While I specifically set the piece in the pre-pandemic world so as to not navigate through the multi-pronged nuances of our current moment, the conversations about race, the ways PWIs try to implement change, and why and when they are not successful are ones happening in all kinds of contexts now. I think that the conversations in the piece are uncomfortable for all parties involved–the labor that the Black teachers in the piece need to lift, the realizations and introspection that the white characters are being forced to navigate, the ways that the institution is pitting Ben and Jasmine against one another…all very uncomfortable but truthful to real-life dynamics. I believe that the piece doesn’t give a “right” answer. I’d like to think that it is clear that the play is on the side of justice for those of “so called” marginalized identities, but that it is open-ended and asks questions about the right ways of achieving said justice.

Q: What playwrights have inspired your body of work? And why?
A: While I read and loved many canonical greats (from Fornes to Albee to Churchill to August Wilson), I have a deep passion for new work and believe that my work is inspired by and in conversation with playwrights actively writing today.

I’m inspired by so many playwrights and make it a goal to try and read at least a few plays a week on New Play Exchange. I gravitate towards playwrights who, similar to me, write complex, nuanced stories with a tight focus on a few characters who possess identities that typically don’t get such “small” and gentle stories told about them. These writers include Gina Femia, Inda Craig-Galvan, Andrew Rosendorf, Rachel Lynett, Deborah Yarchun, Keiko Green, Guadalis Del Carmen, Carla Ching, Kareem Fahmy…truly the list could go on of playwrights whose work I know I will read as soon as they post a new play.

Q: What new projects are on your horizon?
A: I’m thrilled to have a really new piece (as in “so new that it’s set and was written in COVID times”) workshopped and presented with Two River Theatre this past month. I’m also delighted to have been commissioned for a short piece, again responding to our current moment, by Tufts University.

About PlayFest 2021

Immerse yourself in the world of new plays as The Basel-Kiene Family joins City Beverages in presenting PlayFest 2021! This year’s new play festival features six groundbreaking new works that will be presented over the course of two weekends, November 5 – 14, 2021.

Learn More