I’m a playwright who wants to know the hearts and minds of his audience.  It’s my goal to have a conversation with you and create theater that will nourish your conscience and make a meal for your soul.  I believe it’s a good and decent endeavor to collectively pursue and define objective truth and objective morality.  My work seeks to do that investigative work and invites you to come along with me.  There’s an existential urgency for us to join hand-in-hand in this enterprise because poison, hate, and persecution surround us and take their toll in ways seen and unseen. 

 

I write worlds, characters, and situations that make the distinction between right and wrong as clear as possible.  I confront the miasma of moral relativism and pierce its shades of grey, using playwriting to combat any ideology or behavior that promotes chaos, disorder, or wrongdoing.  It’s my ambition to center love and selflessness in my heroes.  I believe in the age-old adage that the best route to goodness is to treat others as you wish to be treated.  Dignity and respect are nurtured when people embrace this truism and I hope to spread that message through storytelling.  And hope is an essential ingredient to who I am and what I write.  I see so much hopelessness in my communities past and present, and it sinks its claws in me from time to time as well.  My hometown is now the post-industrial rust belt Southside that is caricatured in most popular culture.  Neighborhoods have finally become hollowed out horror shows, following in the footsteps of the monolithic factories that were once the pillars of American dignity.   The working class and lower class men and women of the rust belt and the Appalachians are the champions and heroes of my work because I believe in them.  I share their history and I want to share in their future prosperity.

 

I return to love because I’ve seen enough violence and degradation in my life to easily bear fruit called hate.  I funnel these memories and experiences in my work as an effort to excise cruelty and suffering.  In my 40 years on this earth I’ve seen and processed enough to know that there are malcontents in this world, many of them among us.  They fancy themselves as shrewd devils but they’re easy to spot… because much of their malice starts with something simple, like putting more importance in what they say (or tweet) than what they do.  I write these villains, even empathetically, at times, but always with a desire to root out their corruption.  In contrast, the characters I uplift (and hopefully this is true for me too) let our actions speak for us.  Actions are the truest revelation of a person’s character.

 

My aptitudes lead me to storytelling…  My mother is a nurse and I often feel embarrassed I try to serve others in a field where the stakes seem so low.  But I think that’s a mirage, as playwrights can be the arbiters and gatekeepers of the American narrative.  I embrace that responsibility and it’s why I ask you to join me in seeking truth and exploring morality.  It’s my dream to be on the vanguard of a new wave of theater that uses the live stage as a platform to unravel human truths while seeking peace, unity, and love in its audience