The best part of being at Brown thus far has been connecting with other creatives in the school’s multiple graduate artistic programs (alongside RISD) and cultivating dialogue and sharing ideas with some of the most exciting young artists in the country today. 

I am pursuing my Masters of Fine Arts at Brown because it is one of the most well-regarded programs in the field of playwriting. When searching for the right fit, I was excited by the program’s curricular engagement with formal experimentation, and the interdisciplinary work of the writers coming out of Brown. I also wanted to receive more experience in a teaching capacity, and Brown affords me the opportunity to spend two semesters developing my own syllabi teaching undergraduates during my second year. 

In my second year, I feel like I have a much better understanding of the university’s vocabulary for creative praxis and the institution’s resources for artist-researchers. Teaching Playwriting II last semester also allowed me to articulate and reflect upon the tenets of my artistic practice through an educational context, which incited a lot of personal reflection and re-envisioning. This year I have felt a lot more ambitious in my writing, charging an excitement I have always had for playwriting as a form full of possible impossibility.

I am looking to make athletic, technically challenging, language-driven work. Brown is a site for me to experiment and fail. This sense of play is something I want to carry into the professional world, using theatrical spaces as a site for excavating empathy, risk, civility, and protest. 

A faculty member recently told me to harbor a kind of impishness as a writer - which I interpret as an embracement of danger, boldness, cheekiness. Here I aim to avoid the algorithmic regurgitation of storytelling. To live in this world, right now, is to confront a complicated, textured, anachronistic human condition. Brown is providing me a toolbox to create art that is emblematic of this chaotic experience.