I’ve just returned from workshopping a new playyyyyyyy! Remember new plays? It has been a minute for me. Playmakers rep (the company at UNC chapel hill where I did my undergrad) commissioned me to write a Lysistrata adaptation, and I pretty immediately decided it should be about a bunch of women going on a sex strike to get their husbands to stop playing video games, as opposed to, you know, the Peloponnesian War, because virtual spaces are slowly replacing our real ones, chat bots can write scripts and will replace therapists etc etc etc. Also I had to go on my own journey to understand Morrison’s love of video games and I’ve come respect / understand them and accept that baking is my game, my incessant messaging with my friends and buying pants that don’t fit off of Instagram is also my game. It’s my first comedy with a capital C and I wasn’t sure if it was any good, but thanks largely to some very hilarious and smart actors I think I might actually have something great, namely because I have an entire scene in which all of the characters wear sheet face masks while earnestly discussing their personal lives, which I’m sure I stole from something. Sitting around chatting with them, I love you table work, I wondered aloud, what is this play about? It’s a thing you always Know, but Don’t, because holding that answer too tightly can be a trap. After some discussion I was completely unsurprised to realize I’d written a play about empathy and connection, which is literally what my last 90 plays have been about, which are literally the themes that draw me to projects. It’s always the same story, with different people and circumstances, but always me shouting about and searching after the same exact thing.