The Arrogance of Losing, or Play the Game to Win
How the Colts’ crushing near-victory in the ’96 playoffs helped make me a playwright, for real.
Category Archives: First Person
To Sell or Not to Sell: How Would You Sum Up ‘Hamlet’?
One sign that Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy isn’t going away: No one can agree on what it’s about.
Latino Theater Company: How We Grew, and Why
We started as a lab in the 1980s. Now we run a multi-theatre center dedicated to reflecting L.A.’s diversity.
Horton Foote’s Home, Bittersweet Home
Two seasoned Foote performers reflect on his 1992 play, ‘The Roads to Home,’ now in a Primary Stages revival.
Belonging, Bravery, and Beauty: ‘The Laramie Project’ in Uganda
How the story of Matthew Shepard’s murder in a small Wyoming town resonated in a nation where hate and hope are in heated contention.
Putting the Back of the House Front and Center
How ‘The Parlour,’ my play about the hidden hierarchies of the restaurant business, has been served by MCC Theater’s Youth Company.
How to Build a Moving House Without a Turntable in ‘Rain’
For a musical at the Old Globe, we were tasked with creating a structure that could rotate and withstand a downpour. The solution? A self-driving house.
A Year Later in Charleston, ‘Citizen’ Breaks the Silence
A stage adaptation of Claudia Rankine’s poems turns out to be exactly what we needed to respond to our city and our nation’s grief and division.
Beyond the Traditional Talkback: ‘Act II’ Adds Voices to ‘American Song’
For a new play about gun violence, Milwaukee Rep teamed with the Zeidler Center to turn post-show dialogues into engaging and deeply personal experiences.
Found in Translation: Arab Dramas as Mirrors of American Dilemmas
In staging two contemporary Egyptian plays in the U.S., how to eliminate exoticism without erasing specificity? With care, context—and some poetic license.
