Q: How did you get into playwriting?
A: In 2019 I was writing short stories inspired by characters I’d played on stage as an exercise for myself and I was reminded that I really enjoyed sitting down to write. I posted a few on Facebook and a friend read them and reached out to me, suggesting we cowrite a play together. We co-wrote Ghosts of Whitechapel which remains a piece of theatre I’m endlessly proud of — not just because it marked a first for me, but because I took an issue that I felt strongly about and set it on a stage unapologetically. I didn’t know if anyone else would care about the same topic. But what shocked me was that when I sat in that audience and cried, I heard the audience cry, too. This issue I thought I was alone on, suddenly had a room of strangers entirely emotionally invested! And they didn’t just care, they showed up in droves and told their friends about it. Writers have a unique agency and power over what message they want in the world. I like to say that I became an actor to tell the stories that could change the world, but I’ve become a writer to make the stories I want to change the world.

Q: When you’re writing, what does an ideal day look like to you?
A: Before the pandemic, an ideal day looked like a big empty space on my calendar, a little draft latte from a local coffee shop, and a table in the back where I could look out the window and watch people living their lives in the real world between bouts of disappearing into a secret world only I knew, listening to characters that only talked to me. It was a zooming out-and-in experience that gave me joy and endless energy. It’s different now, but I haven’t found a new “ideal.”

Q: How do you define your creative process as a playwright?
A: Maybe it’s because I’m still new to this, but so far my process varies from project to project. I think the one thing that’s common in all my projects is that I usually hear a conversation in my head before I know who’s talking. Sometimes I read something in the news and it may immediately be followed by a voice saying something to the effect of, “That’s not how it happened…” and I try to honor that. I try to start writing as soon as I hear that voice. Once I was sitting in a quiet room and I just kept imagining a woman yelling. And I didn’t know why. So finally I pulled out my laptop and, Lights Up: A woman lays in a hospital room, yelling. Suddenly I was writing about a woman giving birth. I wrote a whole scene about a woman delivering her baby that afternoon. I went on to write a one-act about the unreasonable expectations of women who become mothers… and when it was finished a week later, I laughed. Why was I writing this? I didn’t know anything about birth or labor. Why was this the story playing out in my head? I found out a few days later I was pregnant.

Q: What was your initial inspiration for writing Static Space, and what fueled you throughout the writing process for your play?
A: After I wrote Ghosts of Whitechapel, a novel writer I know named Geonn Cannon asked me if he could read it. He and I have joked we’re friends now but it started as just being members in a Mutual Admiration Society. He is a talented author who has written some books I’ve loved, and he Tweeted at me because he saw a webseries I was in and thought I was pretty good. Since then, he wrote a book called, Can You Hear Me? in which he based the main character on me. (His process is to cast his characters to help him write with specificity.) I was nervous letting Geonn read “Ghosts,” but when he finished he told me he loved it, and if I ever wanted to adapt Can You Hear Me? for the stage, I had his blessing. I thought he was just being nice. Then I kept seeing Col. Noa in a vignette that clearly seemed to open the play. The image stuck with me. Then weeks later, the world shut down for CoVID. And suddenly I was in isolation, just like Col. Noa in the book was. It didn’t take long for me to hear her start speaking. And once I heard that, the play poured out of me. I think feeling that early sense of panic and seclusion during CoVID meant that I never got to escape this world I was building for Noa and Jamie, so writing became a vehicle to save these women from a fate, in some ways, our whole world was experiencing.

Q: Tell us the first four words that come to mind to describe your play.
A: Queer, Connection, Urgency, Growth

Q: Why did you select those four words?
A: While the story happens to be about two queer women, I don’t think of it as being a Queer Romance, persay. It’s a story about two people who find meaningful connection within one another. The fact they happen to be women simply “is” in the world of the story. It doesn’t need justification. However, “queer” will always be the first thing that I think of when I describe the play because of my personal investment in Jamie’s story. When Geonn Cannon wrote the book, he based Jamie off of me. She lives in Indiana (like I did) and she discovers her identity as bi late in life (like I did). Even now, I will defend Jamie’s sexuality in ways I struggle to accept my own. I often don’t feel queer “enough” to be bi. But I never question Jamie, whose experiences are so similar to mine. So queerness is innately wrapped up in this play for me.

As for urgency: I’ll admit this is where I deviated from the book. For the purposes of theatre, I created a challenging conflict that was not in the book (that I don’t want to ruin). But I will say the stakes it adds to the story made it really fun to explore, and I hope will inform me how invested audiences are based on their response.

Growth: there are so many irresponsible portrayals of romance as a “cure” in stories- a cure for loneliness, for heartache, for depression. And I feel emphatic that a healthy relationship is never that. It was important to me that both characters show substantial growth, separate from one another. I hope for that to be what gives us confidence in their wellbeing beyond the play’s end, instead of simply whether or not they end up together.

Q: What playwrights have inspired your body of work? And why?
A: I always wonder how any artist can answer this question. How could I have ever read a play and not been inspired by it? Whether positive or negative, every play I’ve consumed has shaped my ideas of how plays should be told. But because I know that’s sort of a cop-out answer, I’ll respond with one playwright out of the millions who have inspired me. MEH Lewis is a playwright you may not know but you should look up. Her work is beautiful- simple and complex, haunting and relatable. And I was honored to know her before losing her to cancer. I worked with her as an actor on a couple plays and I watched her navigate collaboration in the room and solve insurmountable problems with a deft line change that could alter an entire play. While she never read a word I wrote, she told me I was a writer. For my birthday she bought me a fountain pen and beautifully bound notebooks and told me to write. I like to think every time I write, she’s cheering for me. And when I hear characters in my head talking, I like to think she’s the one whispering their words to me.

Q: What new projects are on your horizon?
A: Ghosts of Whitechapel: The Zoom Play is being produced by Dragonfly Theatre and will stream throughout October. Also, I adapted Static Space into a short film, responsibly shot on a CoVID safe set, which Glass City Films produced with me back in the fall of 2020. We’re now submitting it to festivals and will have updates about where it can be seen on our Static Space Facebook page and also my website: www.kateblackspence-writer.weebly.com. I hope for my third full play to be finished in the next few months and I will post more about that on my website when it’s finished, as well.

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