Artist Statement
I am a writer, director, and television creator who aims to make energizing, relevant, richly detailed dramatic narratives for intelligent, passionate audiences with big brains and big hearts. From my training as a playwright, I learned that there is no such thing as a small character, and I like to design worlds populated by lively, complicated networks and ensembles. My foundation in theater also taught me that every element of the drama – from costumes to music to the weather outside – contributes significantly to the story, and I love working with designers and craftspeople who devise these fundamental symbolic components.
As a TV creator who lived through the streaming boom, I believe that we are in an era in which all types of scripted cinematic narrative – as well as media of every other genre – are collapsing into a new, polymorphous digital form. As an Elder Millennial, born in 1980, who has witnessed the birth and adolescence of the internet, I’m obsessed with charting the shifts in society and consciousness that arise in concert with changes in media and technology, on both a personal and a generational level. Often using pieces of history or semi-forgotten texts as jumping-off points, I enjoy the act of reinventing and recontextualizing the past in order to stir up new meanings for the present. This impulse to set off generative collisions between the old and the new, between fact and imagination, reflects my sense that in our culture today, we are living between two worlds – one broken, and one not yet born.
More than anything, I value honest, deep, emotionally bracing dialogue, and a respect for what is truly beautiful. I’m open to any context for urgent, surprising discourse, as well as brave, generous collaborators who will go there with me. From childhood through old age, I believe, art teaches us how to be human, and then keeps our humanity in tune. This is a job that is more necessary than ever in our age of ubiquitous computers. As an artist, I seek opportunities to make uncompromised interventions in our rapidly evolving, high-stakes global conversation.