Taking up playwriting was a total surprise to me. When it happened I was a Contributing Editor with New Jersey Monthly Magazine. I came across a story that I was fascinated by, but couldn't figure out how to write as an article.  I started a list for myself of all the curious details of this story (the competitive friendship of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton), and soon began seeing their relationship as scenes in a play.  I have always been an enthusiastic audience member, and was attending a lot of theater at the time. I had never considered writing for the stage, but I really was fascinated by the conflict between these two individuals and wanted to find out why, so I continued to pursue the form that the story took. As is so often with creative writing, the subject dictated the form.

Some twelve years later, after putting aside my "day job" as reference librarian and also after moving from the New York area to Houston, that play finally reached an audience as The Brightest Light.  By that time I had figured out what interested me so: the intertwined lives of these two men essentially highlighted the rise of individualism and the demise of "the common good." By the time it premiered, it was my sixth full-length play.

During those twelve years I also completed undergraduate studies and graduate studies in theater, acquiring an MA in theater arts.  I consider myself very lucky to have studied for three semesters with one of the most talented directors of new work, José Quintero, at the University of Houston, as well as other accomplished members of the staff there. (My BA degree years before had been in English literature, with a minor in philosophy, and when I looked back at that college transcript, I saw that I had taken every course available in Dramatic Literature.  My honors thesis was on the philosophy of community that was evident in all T.S. Eliot's secular plays. Obviously the theatre interested me, but not in the usual way of wanting to be on stage performing.)

That first play, The Brightest Light, has in a couple ways been very typical of my dramatic work. The theme of community can be found to some degree in most of my full-length plays.  And, I still don't start with an idea that I want to address, but instead I get intrigued by a story or a person or a conflict between individuals that fascinates me.  I pursue that, and by the time I have written the play and figured out what happened between these characters, what the play is really about (the theme, the premise, the idea) has usually revealed itself to me.