Thanks for checking out the LAFPI “tag team” blog, below, handed off each week from one interesting female playwright to another.
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Steeped in Sadness
Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness… Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke (from Letters to a Young Poet)
Has it really been a week now since the President of the United States, Donald Trump, announced “Epic Fury” on Iran? The night before that, Friday, 02/27/2026, the LAFPI Blog editor sent me the reminder that it’s my week to blog. Meanwhile, it’s also Lenten season, and Ramadan at the same time. I decided I will not be blogging about any leading headlines. With the weight of world events, I’m feeling quite tired and sad in every sense of the word.
Right now, I choose to just attend to what’s necessary. Cut back on social media, cut back on texting, cut back in general on unnecessary noise. The simplicity of putting one foot in front of the other, rather than one word after another has been my steady gait. I mean this literally. I’ve just been hiking in the nearby park and criss-crossing the trails. Words escape me. I have images juxtaposed upon another.
I am deadheading the faded blossoms and the accumulation of non-sense. This spring cleaning has awakened my consciousness of the joy I’ve been robbing myself of. I miss writing poetry. There was a time that writing a poem came to me so innocently pure. The high states of being in-love prompted expression of the bursting ecstasy. The “mean reds” and deep blues flowed like spilt fountain pen ink all over the page and onto the table; the stain taking shape, come what may.
The theme of yesterday’s homily was the importance of faithfulness and accountability for what has been entrusted to us from the divine. Everyone has a talent, and yes, some are gifted with more than one, hence more is expected from those with more talents to offer. I felt the priest was speaking directly to me for not being faithful and accountable for my writing. It’s been on my mind a lot, for quite sometime.
A couple of weeks ago, I had the inkling for “diving into the wreck” of poetry. I carried around a book of poems, but not really burying myself into it. Then recently, I had thirty minutes to spare before the 5:30 PM mass, and I ordered steamed dumplings at Northern Cafe Dumpling House. While the order was being prepared, I crossed the Figueroa Street to peruse the books at the Goodwill, and I quickly found a paperback of a collection of essays and poems by Adrienne Rich. I felt fortuitous, and guided to be on the right track. I’ve been absorbing her works I hadn’t read before.
Tonight, walking under the canvas of stars and moon, in its waning gibbous phase, I recalled a bible book from the old days at The Imagined Life acting studio with Diane Castle. One of the required reading was “Letters to a Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke. When I got home, I quickly found my copy. When I opened the book, a couple of pictures fell out. They were of my beloved Bruno Herve Commereuc. One picture shows Bruno, in front of a stove, holding a sauté pan with one hand while the other is spooning something into the pan. The other picture shows him relaxed and thoughtful, on a chair, surprisingly holding a Coca Cola can (and not a glass of wine). I remember he told me this was the upstairs of Angelique Cafe, his first restaurant in Los Angeles. During this time in his life he looks like a young poet. There was a sweet mien in his gaze and deep passion in the set of his jaws.
The pictures were inserted at the end of “Eight”, the eighth letter of Rilke to Kappus, written on August 12th, 1904. This particular letter addresses the sadness that Kappus revealed to Rilke in a prior letter.
Rilke advises the Kappus on the poignancy of his sadness.
I believe that almost all our sadness are moments of tension that we find paralyzing because we no longer hear our surprised feelings living…
And this is why it is so important to be lonely and attentive when one is sad: because the apparently uneventful and stark moment at which our future sets foot in us is so much closer to life than the other noisy and fortuitous point of time at which it happens to us as if from outside. The more still, more patient and more open we are when we are sad, so much the deeper and so much more unswervingly does the new go into us…
At 2 o’clock tonight, I will adjust my wristwatch one hour ahead to “spring” forward. This perhaps is a jump start on getting out of the quagmire that I feel anxious to get out of so I can get on with life. But, I know it’s not the way through. I need to be more still, and more patient and more open to this sadness and let it run through me, without hanging on to anything.
Love Is & Will Always Be
by Constance Jaquay
Love Is & Will Always Be
In times when systems fracture, and values feel unstable, Love rises to be the only organic matter that can’t be tainted.
1.
On the deathbed of her mother, she sits. In over forty years, it’s the first time they’ve held hands. They cling to one another as though their bodies can reverse time.
He holds her face in the palm of his hands. He lifts her head towards him and whispers in her ear: I love you forever. Her left hand covers his right hand // she replies, pressing her face deeper into his palm.
2.
In between uterine contractions and cervical dilations, she pushes life from her body. Her mind traces and tracks what it took to get to this moment. She remembers the first time she met her husband. How young/bold they were. She’d never imagine thirteen years would go by_together. A nurse hands her a crying baby; as she holds her little girl in her arms, her heart morphs // she begins to realize, as her mother was, that she is now a mother too.
3.
It felt as though she’d been crying for years. Weeks turned into months, and it seems she has only just begun to find her rhythm again. He was her first gift. They had grown up together. In many ways, it felt as though her dog Dingus was her soul manifested as an animal. For months, he seemed to have stopped playing, as though he was living only to survive. It was time she realized she must let him go. That his pain wasnot her pain, and it wasn’t fair to keep him alive. She felt as though shed been kicked in the gut over and over again. She never imagined she would be burying her first baby.
As life does, it reminds us of the fragility of what it means to be human.
In moments of passing and in moments of new life, in holding on and in letting go, one thing remains untouched:
Death comes for us all. What lingers and sticks is what the heart held. What endures is that we dared to love, long after one is gone.
Love Is & Will Always Be
Singing Star Trek
by Kitty Felde
In the latest iteration of Star Trek, “Star Fleet Academy,” the loveable 900 year old holographic doctor played by actor Robert Picardo has returned and his love of opera has spilled out across the universe. It’s great fun, but can’t compete with the full-length Star Trek opera I was lucky enough to witness earlier this month.
The Pacific Opera Project, a plucky little company founded in 2011 by Josh Shaw, has a mission as clear as boldly going where no theatre company has gone before: “To reimagine opera as an affordable adventure, by making unforgettable, entertaining performances accessible for all.” And indeed, their production of Mozart’s “Abduction from the Seraglio” fulfilled that mission. And it didn’t take five years.
The plot of the original opera is pretty dumb: the hero, a Spanish nobleman, is out to rescue his love interest from a Turkish harem. In the POP revival of its 2015 production, the Turkish bad guys have been transformed into Klingons (Andrew Potter, with a voice as deep as deep space who must be at least seven feet tall!) and our Spanish nobleman hero has been reborn as Captain James T. Belmonte (played by Brian Cheney) who channels his best WIlliam Shatner, complete with manly poses and staccato dialogue. The women, alas, are stuck in “Barbarella” era outfits – at least until the plucky Lt. Uhuru knockoff (Shawnette Sulker) changes into her velour mini skirted uniform. The libretto was written by Josh and Kelsey Shaw and conducted by Caleb Glickman.
The audience could be described as opera fans at a Star Trek convention. There was even an award for the best costume.
There were tribbles, sword fights (using the curved edge Klingon bat’leth) and even a hilarious boulder tossing tussle with the giant lizard Gorn – one of the dumbest scenes from the original Star Trek series.
I confess: I am not a huge opera fan. And I’ve seen so much bad theatre in my time that I was prepared for the worst.
It was wonderful. THIS was theatre at its finest – smart, silly, touching, terrific performances by the leads sprinkled with scene stealing chorus members from Occidental College. It reminded me of the glory days of the 1980’s when small theatres popped up all over Los Angeles, the days when even “Time” magazine named L.A. the genesis of innovative theatre. Sigh.
The run has ended. Alas. But you can still see the production on YouTube. No pointy ears required.
Kitty Felde is the author of The Fina Mendoza Mysteries series of books and podcasts, a middle grade book series designed to introduce civics to kids.
This is what you’re gonna do…
This last week was a weird one. My novella, Krackle’s Last Movie, was officially published with an amazing small press, Split/Lip Press. What this meant was I found myself in a zoom Craft Talk with the Writer’s Center, which I’d stressed about for a week and wrote out four pages of notes for myself. Because I don’t trust myself to know my own work or process just off the top of my head.
Probably the most truthful thing that came out of it was something I hadn’t written down. They asked at what point in the writing process do I start thinking about “craft”. Is it always part of the process or does it come in later?
And my answer was that I’m always aware of it. But I’ve had to turn off the judgement. Let there be ugly sentences and misshapen scenes. And then when I go back…I look at craft in layers.
I do a layer of character. A layer of detail. A layer of structure. The big layers first, which usually means structural stuff – moving scenes around, etc. Then character arcs. Then details. And on and on. I know for myself, if I look at everything I need to do, I freeze up and can’t move forward. Same if I don’t let go of the judgement when first writing — I freeze up and nothing gets written.
I don’t think this is revolutionary. But as the talk went on, I found myself returning to the idea of layers. Every scene is layered. Every detail that’s chosen has layers. Structure has layers. You drill down multiple layers within every moment of a piece of writing (or insert other important thing here.)
I felt like some kind of echo chamber of my own making, every time I said the word “layer.” But I don’t think I’d ever articulated it like that before. When you’re forced to articulate what you do…you suddenly become aware of the hidden mechanisms that have been built below the surface.
There’s probably a metaphor in there somewhere for the times we’re in.
In any case, if you’re overwhelmed right, whether that’s in your writing or with the world at large, try piecing out the layers of a thing rather than hitting everything all at once.
This meme is maybe the best way to summarize it:
the Difficulty of Change…
by Robin Byrd
In the book, The Poet’s Companion, the authors Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux tell the reader to continue to write, “to do what Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy asked: to add your light to the sum of light. Do it with patience, and love, and respect for the depth and difficulty of the task” (Addonizio & Laux, 1997).
Every couple of four or five years, my writing changes. If I focus on that too hard, I could begin to think I’ve lost my craft. Instead, I try to remember that as I grow, so does my approach to writing. At worst, it feels like scratching in the back of my throat, a cough stuck behind mucus, and an overwhelming urge to gag at times. The overload of fodder that clogs my brain can feel like failure to produce. Or it would feel that way if there wasn’t the part of me saying, “just a little bit more and the idea will speak.” In times like these, I have to respect the depth and difficulty of the change. Change is inevitable in all things, a part of life.
I have this great idea about a new play – a work akin to nothing I have attempted in the past. The idea itself is in and out of allusiveness, grainy and foggy with moments of clarity. Clarity arriving in small spots of light like sun coming in through the clouds. It’s an odd sense – this new thing. It’s also exciting to see what the end will bring – to go toward the light, as it were.
For months, I’ve been feeling like I’ve almost got it.
I find it in my poetry – little hints of what is to come. I could be wrong, but I keep thinking that if I let the poetry flow, it will lead me to the “first words” of the play I am trying to begin. It will lead me to the page.
This baby is way overdue.
Addonizio, K. & Laux, D. (1997). The poet’s companion: a guide to the pleasures of writing poetry. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Spaces on Stage
By Cynthia Wands
The growing trees in Lori Nix and Kathleen Gerber’s artwork (@nix_gerber_studio) ‘Library’ reveal a glimpse of hope surrounded by the slow decay of human culture. This striking image is part of the artists’ series exploring post-apocalyptic landscapes and interiors, created entirely by hand using miniature models and painstakingly assembled dioramas.
I used this image as inspiration for a play I wrote about ghosts, hoarding, the artist John James Audubon and a historic home that faces decay, “The Hoarding House”. I was drawn to the idea of creating a space onstage that would share the world of an interior space that had been lived in and loved and left. The pulse behind this idea came from my grandparents home and it’s slow decay, a grand house in Upstate New York that they called Bonnie Brae.
I was reminded last night of the power of interior spaces when I went to the opening night of Catherine Butterfield’s play at the Open Fist Theatre, “Brownstone”.
I haven’t been to an opening night in quite a while, so I was thrilled to be part of a full house of theater people, who gave themselves over to the magic of a first night. The performances were wonderful, the direction crisp and nuanced, and the story especially poignant. I’ll just say that I loved the last moments of the play. But I left marveling at the silent character, the magical element – the home. The Brownstone became (for me) a wonderful felt experience of aging in place, with chapters of lives and energies played out over time. I also loved the set design of the interior – with minimal adjustments, you could see what was once a grand home shape shifting through the decades.
It was a lovely evening, and the audience response was a great experience. I was especially chuffed to hear this morning that this play has been extended to March 14! If you can, come see this show; it’s a beautiful kaleidoscope of memory, the echo of different lives, and the silent testament of interior spaces.
Villains and Forgiveness
By Cynthia Wands
I had my first gin martini this weekend after some years of staying away from martinis. After a difficult week, I was thinking of villains and forgiveness.
On Saturday I saw a matinee performance of Patrick Page in his one man show: ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica. It was a virtuoso performance in a well written, beautifully executed production, with a full house, and a rapt audience. This is an extraordinary performer with a full, deep resonant voice – able to give full meaning to Shakespeare’s villains. His command of the language was extraordinary. The beautiful vibration of his voice was seductive and powerful and illuminating.
And then. A few minutes just before the end of the performance, his on-body microphone failed. I’m not sure if it fell off, or if there was technical issue, but the sound of his voice changed immediately.
This is an actors nightmare. (Also, a nightmare for the sound technician and the stage manager). He continued speaking, but without amplification, and still gave a beautiful performance.
Although the Broad has wonderful acoustics, now he was almost hard to hear (sitting center orchestra), in contrast to his forceful volume that we had heard for almost 90 minutes. His last climatic section, Prospero from THE TEMPEST, was heard as a much softer, quieter monologue. Very wisely, he did not try to roar out the last bits, this was a matinee and he had an evening show in a few hours. I thought he handled the problem with such grace, he gave a really wonderful performance, and afterwards he hosted a talk back session with the audience, where he spoke with perfect volume.
It sparked an old observation for me that well spoken men, loud men, men that that fill the space and focus with the sound of their voice – have incredible power. The Alpha Male speaks and the vibration of authority is acknowledged.
This vocal power also played into the enjoyment of seeing men as villains who embody the world of evil – the sociopath. The curious audience satisfaction of seeing a villain who loves being bad, getting away with it, flapping about with the sins of an evil mind.
And the contrast, when the vocal power was reduced – when the voice was not overwhelming – then the specter of evil seemed smaller. It brought me to think about women’s voices, their vocal power, how they are heard when they have focus and authority. How do they sound when they are the villain?
It also brought to mind all the stage accidents I have ever seen and been in over the years – the missed entrances, the batteries that fall out of the floating candelabra, the onstage phone that doesn’t ring, the medical emergencies, the play that does go wrong. The absolute nerve you need to pick up that cue, substitute the missing prop, try and jump back into the music when you mess up the lyrics.
So after that performance, I’ve been thinking a lot about villains. The villains in our life right now. With the incessant bombardment of news about evil sociopaths and immigrant hunting villains and political mayhem – I did think – I might need a gin martini. Maybe later.
And an interesting tie in to the idea of villains and force, and all that, was a wonderful service I attended to celebrate the anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at a little church here in Woodland Hills. This was a anniversary of the sermon Dr. King gave at the church 65 years ago – and a marvelous actor – Mr. Gerald Rivers, gave an incredible performance, as he embodied Dr. King’s words and person. It was a packed house in the church, and the gospel songs the choir sang beforehand were so uplifting. But it was his performance of Dr. King that really pierced my heart. I especially heard themes of forgiveness: “Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.”
Mr. Gerald Rivers, an extraordinary actor who brought the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to life.
I did hear Mr. Rivers share the story of his path to portray Dr. King, and his own advice to us was “Forgive Everybody”. I heard him say that and I found myself shaking my head. No sir, I am not forgiving everybody. No way, no how, not then, not now. And then I sat with that for a while and realized I have to do some more thinking about forgiveness. And later on that evening, when I was home with my cat Ted, and we were blinking at one another, I realized. Now would be the time for that gin martini.
After the recent focus I had on villains and sociopaths, this idea of forgiveness was a real challenge. Here’s to the inspiration of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mr. Gerald Rivers. Thank you.
The small delights of space
Life has been full lately. “Full” means busy, but being a California transplant from the Northeast, I despise the word busy, so I say full instead. It is full to the seams, bursting even. It can be frustrating, the finite container of a day filled. Despite pressing on every seam you cannot find a space where there is any give. As someone who deeply loves space, the big California blue sky, finding a deeper inhale, being the first one awake with an infinite day stretching before you, this is not my natural habitat, full. My natural habitat is space.
I went out one morning recently. I noticed the warm and sunny January air, the sky, the cars driving by. The soft music playing at the coffee shop, the scrape of the chair, the green of my matcha latte, the way green things find a way to sprout anywhere in Los Angeles, even amongst concrete. I noticed the people and the dogs accompanying them and the sun on their soft faces. After weeks of life being filled to the brim, I was delighted to find so much space in an ordinary moment.
Space can exist in fullness, I am learning. If you have only five minutes to find space, you will find it. For those of us who create, what a remembering.
New year new you!
by Jennifer Bobiwash
Hello dear ones. We are, oh my gosh, how many days into 2026? Can you believe it? Does this happen when you get older? Do you lose track of time? Or even have the moment when it was just 2023 and you were doing this cool thing? Oh shoot, that was…..years ago. What does that even mean? I’m really curious young ones out there. Do you feel like the world is just passing you by? I say this because I am in search of what my New Year’s resolution is or what do I want from this new year and why do I have to make a decision on it?
I guess it’s a goal.
It’s something to push me through.
It’s something to motivate me and make me, I don’t know, be better?
Okay, so year in review 2025. Hmm, I don’t know what to say about you. Okay. I do know what to say about 2026 though. Since 2025 was kind of a slow year, relatively speaking. Let’s make some stuff happen in 2026. Let’s get some plays written. Let’s just get some writing done.
How’s that?
Super duper!
Okay, but how do we carry on? What do we do? What do we write about? How does it all start?
Ughhhh! I think that’s what it is. I have forgotten how to do everything.
During the pandemic, I took writing classes. It was how to write a play and just because, for me in my mind, I need a step by step or at least what something should look like. And I feel in the last year I’ve forgotten how to do it all. I’ve written random pieces of little bits of story and text and dialogue, but never anything complete. So this year will be, oh my goodness, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but relearning how to write a play.
I always think “how do you write a play” because when Native people talk about writing, it’s about decolonization and stuff. Western writing is not how we write things. It’s not, for Native people, we don’t tell stories in the Aristotelian way, right? There is no big climax. So saying that confuses me. What the hell is the story supposed to look like? It’s a circle, these wise elders tell me. What does that even mean? I used to sit with my grandfather and he used to tell stories. What, is it that it has no ending? “It has go out there young one and life will discover you.” uhhhh, what?
Oh my gosh, I don’t know that this is going anywhere. I don’t think this is good indication. I think this is an indication of what 2026 will be for me and my writing. A big blur, a big melange, a big pile of writing.
So, dear reader, I ask, how do you start a play? Do you start in the middle? Do you start with an idea? Do you know the ending? Do you outline? I’m curious on how people write. Because right now, all I have are journal entries and morning writes that I’m trying to get better at, sidebar, and write every day, regardless of how much it is. Where do I even start? Hey, dear reader, thanks for listening to me mumble and jumble.
Happy New Year!
Happy Writing!
World Premiere: A Subtle Kind of Murder
When others demand that we become the people they want us to be, they force us to destroy the person we really are. It’s a subtle kind of murder. —Jim Morrison
The play A Subtle Kind of Murder written by Dale Dunn had its world premiere at the New Mexico Actors Lab this past summer, and it has just been nominated for the Broadway World Awards in the categories of Best New Play, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Ensemble Acting, Best Scenic Design, Best Lighting Design, and Best Production! This achievement could not make me happier or be more inspiring for myself as a fellow playwright who offered feedback in the early stages of writing. I had the pleasure of being a part of Jennie Webb’s Next Draft Workshop with Dale back in 2021, reading early drafts of the script when the sinewy musculature hadn’t been fully realized and the thematic threads were not neatly tied. It is always satisfying to see a play come together after being a part of its developmental process. Dale knew clearly what she wanted to write about, but there was a lot of metaphor and symbolism within the overlapping worlds she was creating, especially tied to the multimedia aspect of her piece that needed shaping. What I remembered most about her play was that it was deeply feminist, and it spoke to the relentless sexism and abuse of young women who are trying to make something of themselves professionally. While I did not get to see the production, I reached out to Dale to read the latest production copy of the play. I’ve now just read it, and all I can say is that it leaves a reader breathless! I can only imagine what it was like to have a seat in the darkened theater. Five years in the making, and the final script is simultaneously heartbreaking, gut-punching and, dare I say, hopeful.
A Subtle Kind of Murder is a play seeded by a confluence of ideas (and worlds) that are all thematically tied to living as a woman in a sexually predatory patriarchy. Jane, an acclaimed novelist, has been hired to write a screenplay adaptation of the 1947 noir murder mystery novel In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes. Under deadline to finish the script, Jane sequesters herself in her childhood home, a remote Kansas farmhouse with the Filmmaker, her staunch but strict motivator who encourages Jane to stay focused and get the job done. However, the two are unexpectedly interrupted by the Woman in Brown, a young, bright-eyed woman who stumbles into the farmhouse after being followed by the Man in the Hat. The Man in the Hat, a shadowy figure whose voice and presence is felt by all the women, but never materializes until play’s end, doubles as the serial killer from Hughes’ novel and the bigtime executive who once sexually assaulted Jane in a Hollywood studio, when she was once a young, naïve assistant, whose dreams of making it big in the industry were killed from the humiliating transgression. Not coincidentally, Jane’s current writing contract is with the same Hollywood executive who assaulted her decades before; he does not recognize her because she’s taken on the pen name Jane Franklin, after Ben Franklin’s sister, a woman who never got an education nor a fair shot while her brother was given every resource to become the famous intellectual, inventor, and founding father. So, it’s fair to say, Jane has something to prove and an axe to grind.
As the play progresses, we start to gather that the Woman in Brown, like the Man in the Hat, doubles as the murder victim in the Hughes novel as well as the younger version of Jane. She is, as Jane describes her, “the young woman who had the nerve to think of the world as her oyster.” Both the Woman in Brown and the Filmmaker are versions of Jane at different stages of her life. They serve as figments of her imagination as she is haunted by the chilling veil of a man’s rapaciousness while she fights to claim her agency as a woman and an artist. Jane references her own acclaimed novel, which is the same title as this play, by describing a subtle kind of murder as the “the murder of the self.” Jane goes on to say “The subtle kind of murder leaves you in a sort of tortured half life….dazed…powerless…often fighting shame and regret.” As the three women argue over Jane’s chosen pen name, she declares “Jane. It’s every woman’s name.” Here is the crux of the play for me. Aren’t we women all Jane? Even in 2025, when there is lip service paid toward a #MeToo movement that holds powerful men accountable, it seems that for every jailed Weinstein, Cosby, or Epstein, there is another man lurking in the shadows, ready to decimate a woman as, in Dale’s words, “just another girl in the office.” Ultimately, as Dale describes, the play is about “self-forgiveness.” She says, “there are so many Why didn’t I?’s in life.” She is quick to answer the question: “Well, you didn’t, and it’s okay. You have to look at it. And then leave it.” She goes on to explain, “Jane is confronting her past, the assault that made her turn away from her ambitions, and she needs to see it for what it is in order to move past it and do the creative work she is meant to do.” The pain of regret and humiliation is suffocating, and it consumes so many victims of assault. But it’s not just physical assault that women contend with, it’s the multitude of micro-aggressions that tell us to behave, to please, to keep quiet, to wait our turn, to act right, to apologize, to shrink, to cower, and on and on and on. A woman must permit herself to reject it all, to say no, to get out from under the patriarchal power.
The play is a multi-media performance that utilizes film projection and sound to tell its story. Dale has a lot of experience using projections in her staged works. She sees it as a theatrical tool to serve as “an extension of the mind” and to be “inside the writer’s [Jane’s] mind” as opposed to being a place setter. Throughout the play there is the projection of Jane’s text as it is being typed, the thunderous and chilling projection of the ocean—the place where the Woman in Brown is found murdered—and of the diner into which the Woman in Brown escapes. All of the stage design and multimedia lends itself to the mirrored and mysterious worlds characteristic of the noir genre.
Dale herself is no newbie to the theater. She has worked in theaters across the nation including the Public Theater in New York and the Red Barn Theater in Key West. She co-founded her own theater in New Mexico called Just Say It Theater and has years of teaching experience in both playwriting and production at New Mexico School for the Arts. Her longtime theater partner, Lynn Goodwin served as both the dramaturg and director of A Subtle Kind of Murder, which explains the synergy, flexibility, experimentation, and care that the ensemble carried throughout the developmental process from table read to production.
I asked Dale whether or not she had a recording of the piece that I could view; Sadly, she didn’t have anything, only a muffled and grainy recording that wouldn’t do the play justice. At first, I felt that this was disappointing, but I also realize it’s sort of the point. Nothing can replace the ephemeral magic of theatre. I truly hope A Subtle Kind of Murder gets another production; It’s a play that every Jane (and John) should see.
