PLAYWRITING
As a playwright of dramatic, comedic, and often Shakespeare-inspired work, I am most interested in the stories of the characters often overlooked or dismissed. My current work in progress is a compilation of monologues featuring Shakespeare's underdeveloped characters titled The Tiring House Monologues. The name was inspired by the backstage area in early modern theatres known as the tiring house, where actors would get into costume and prepare to take the stage. This still-growing collection directly inspired my first play, Roussillon, a reimagination of All's Well That Ends Well. Across my myriad Tiring House series projects, I aim to examine the what-ifs of moments that happen offstage in Shakespeare's texts, to delve deeply into the motivations and private interludes lurking in the space between text and stage, along with the narrative possibilities and implications they spark.
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS
Excerpts from the sketch "Elizabethan Update" (All's Well That Ends, 2022):
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Local police are on the lookout for the fairy known as Robin Goodfellow, who is accused of drugging half the youth of Athens. The merry wanderer of the night was last seen putting a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes, to which the earth has levied charges of body shaming.
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Game wardens in the Forest of Arden are searching for a man who has taken to carving love poems into the trees. Luckily, the man has managed to single-handedly decimate an invasive species of oak environmental activists have been fighting to eliminate for years. Even so, the wardens are looking to apprehend the man whose terrible poems have, quote, “set back human progress by at least four centuries.”
PAST PROJECTS
ROUSSILLON
All's well that ends well yet, but how do we reach the ending? Bertram's path and Helena's converge and intertwine, but they are not the same. Roussillon asks what does it mean to grow up, what does it mean to grieve, and how do we find our voices when our choices aren't our own?
Parallel to the events of William Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well, Roussillon is Bertram's story.
A grave spirit hangs o’er Roussillon yet,
As if we were the dead and not our fathers
And our own graves did yawn and call us hence.
Helen, Roussillon 1.3
The smallest atomy hath
Yet a little weight though we be blind to’t.
The wheels of Fate do turn by such degrees
As we can scarce detect—a friendly breeze
Or sickly air stand equal in potential.
Bertram, Roussillon 1.3
CURRENT PROJECTS
THE GALLOWS WEDDING
Beautiful, intelligent, respected... The courtesans of Venice are the brightest plumes in the city's feathered cap—until a staunch young Cardinal from Rome arrives. What is the difference between love and lust, and does it matter when both paths lead to death?
Love and lust are different beasts that sometime meet
And mingle in their heat, but never merge.
They may walk hand-in-hand a day, a month,
A lifetime, but either can be fickle.
Giovanna, The Gallows Wedding 1.2
Though I bear not a woman’s shape beneath
These feathered fripperies and ropes of pearl,
I bear a woman’s heart, her soul, and know
What ‘tis to bear the blame for man’s transgression.
Lucrezia, The Gallows Wedding 3.1