What gets me out of bed in the morning is women’s rage.

Every color of it, every form it takes, every direction it spews in, every simmering second it takes before it blows the top off entirely.

Some of my favorites:

Stevie in The Goat (Edward Albee), Tracey in Sweat (Lynn Nottage), George in How to Transcend a Happy Marriage (Sarah Ruhl), Genevieve in Plano (Will Arbery), Beatrice in A View From the Bridge (Arthur Miller), another Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing (William Shakespeare), Laurie in Pipeline (Dominique Morisseau) Ashlee in Dance Nation (Clare Barron), Alana in Slave Play (Jeremy O Harris), Bev in Clybourne Park (Bruce Norris), Jane in Bobbie Clearly (Alex Lubischer)…

The list is long.

These characters are at odds with patriarchy— constantly toggling between expressive subject and erotic object. This is where I love to play most.

When I was little The Sound of Music was an obsession. I loved the way the beauty and the danger rubbed up against one another and I found the love stories tantalizing. It wasn’t until decades later when I found myself singing this familiar tune that I really heard the lyrics for the first time:

You wait, little girl / On an empty stage / For fate to turn the light on / Your life little girl / Is an empty page / That men will want to write on / To write on

If I were the type to write an artist statement it would be whatever the opposite of this is. Let me see…

Go forth and be fully human. Be angry and ugly, brave and beautiful, soft and tender, hard and pointy. But never forget that the most important person in the scene is your partner. Put your attention on them. Rest sometimes, but never really stop. Find a community of like-minded brave souls. Lift each other up, care for each other, challenge one another. Step aside when there is a braver, more beautiful, more urgent story to be told. And center these truths always: trans women are women, no one is illegal, and P@lestine must be free.