One of my favorite NYC subway stations. Had to have one last view!

Apologies to those of you who were eagerly awaiting news from me in September. It was a crazy month! I spent the month packing up my Brooklyn townhouse, and a few days ago my husband and I moved back to Arlington, Virginia after seven eventful years in NYC.

I could tell you about why I’m happy moving here and what I already miss, but maybe in another newsletter. Right now I don’t have time to weigh the differences. My play It’s My Party! opens in ten days, at a DC-area theatre that is practically in my backyard.

It’s good to be back in the same locale as my production and creative team, as well as fellow Pipeline Playwrights. Nothing like being in the rehearsal space, “the room where it happens.”

I have felt a frisson of excitement as I hear what I wrote land differently than it has before. I never imagined, when i wrote the play in 2017 for the 2020 celebration of the Suffrage Centennial, it would be as relevant today. As a playwright, you hope your work is not just of a time, but timeless. I don’t know if this one has that quality yet, but it’s certainly timely in a way I did not anticipate when it finally had its premiere in Dallas, post-Covid, in 2021.

The creative process always involves a huge act of faith. Even the most nimble artist needs a certain amount of time to generate, refine, edit, re-create, workshop, tweak, and pronounce the work done. i think it is one of the best things about humans; most of us find ways to exercise our creative spark, whatever it is, to create something valuable and meaningful.

The act of making art is an expression of hope. Hope that it will satisfy (on some level) an urge in the artist. But even more importantly, hope that it will be a bridge to connect—on a deeper level—with unnamed and unknown witnesses who partake of it.