About Me
As a playwright, fiction writer & workshop facilitator, I read, write, watch, tell, prompt and play with stories. In fiction & life, protagonists who encounter adversity, grow and change inspire me. I love helping people imagine new beginnings and better endings through creative writing, theatre, and experiential workshops. My goal is to create settings where artistic expression and personal transformation thrive.
As a psychotherapist for many years, I expressed my passion for theater by directing psychodramas in therapeutic settings. After closing my psychotherapy practice to focus on my creative writing, I published Before You Forget – The Wisdom of Writing Diaries for Your Children (2001) based on decades of writing diaries for my three children and facilitating diary/journal writing workshops. I embarked on a New England book tour providing workshops for parents in community and educational settings and book stores inspiring hundreds of parents to discover the creative parenting art of diary storytelling for their children.
In 2002 I joined Playwrights’ Platform, began writing one-act and full length plays and having them performed locally and nationally and published. As a board member and President of Playwrights’ Platform I coordinated a variety of play development activities supporting dozens of new playwrights and Boston area actors and directors. I helped produce the annual Playwrights’ Platform Annual Festival in Boston for many years, and I co-founded and produce the annual Our Voices Festival of Boston Area Women Playwrights, now in its 7th year.
I have over three decades of experience facilitating personal growth and creative writing workshops in community, educational and therapeutic settings, including professional presentations at the American Society for Group Psychotherapy and National Association for Poetry Therapy conferences. For the past five years I’ve been practicing playback theatre and integrating the imaginative power of playback into my workshops. This fall, I’ll be presenting at Playback Theatre North America in Washington, DC and the New England Theatre Conference, Boston area. Playback Theatre is a transformational form of community-based theatre prompting spontaneous stories shared by audience members and “played back” (artistically improvised) for the teller by trained actors or audience volunteers. "Playback has the magical ability to create a deep ritual space where any story—however ordinary, extraordinary, hidden, or difficult—might be told and affirmed,” [Playback Theatre North America]
My education is in English literature, education and counseling. I have my M.Ed. from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education and a B.A., English, University of Mass., Amherst (Phi Beta Kappa). I’m a certified psychodramatist, a Fellow in the American Society for Group Psychotherapy & Psychodrama, a member of Playback North America and a member of the Dramatist’s Guild.
Selected Play Credits:
Winner of the Susan McIntyre Play Festival, my full-length drama, Weekend at the Dreaming Cloud, had a workshop production at Yellow Taxi, Nashua, NH, 2008, as well as two-evenings of readings with the New Plays at the Nora Theatre, Cambridge; (also a finalist in The John Gassner New Play Festival, Stony Brook Univ., NY & The Boston Actors Theatre). Selected monologues from my comedy, ENVIA!, were produced by the Playwrights’ Platform Annual Festival, Boston; New Ideas Festival, TORONTO; The Amazing Things Arts Center, Framingham, MA; and the Island Theatre Workshop, Vineyard Haven, MA. A one-act version of ENVIA! was performed in Clearwater, FL, as well as by the Boston Actors Theater, Boston, MA. My short play, Everything Blows Away, was produced by The New Ideas Festival, Alumnae Theatre, Toronto, and was selected as a finalist in the Nantucket Short Play Festival. My one-act romantic comedy, Amber & Air, was performed at the Double XX Fest, Seattle, WA. Selections from my one-act children’s play, Rocky & Skye, were produced by the Youth Education on Stage Festival, ND, where it won 2nd place & selections were produced by the City Theatre of Independence, MO; the one-act play is published by Youth Plays. Hothouse, a finalist for the Arts and Letters Prizes, The Robert Lehan Award, and the Nantucket Short Play Festival, was produced by the Hovey Summer Arts Festival, and is published by Heuer Publishing. Hovey also produced my one-act play, What We Save, a finalist for the Arts and Letters Prizes; also produced by the Boston Actor’s Theatre, Cambridge. Bloom, produced by Playwright’s Platform Summer Festival, won the Playwrights' Choice Award, and was produced at the Philipstown Depot Festival, the Samuel French Off Off Broadway Festival, & Flint City Theatre, MI and is published by Heuer Publishing. Spa Reservations was produced by the Boston Theatre Marathon. Practicing Peace was produced by the Playwright’s Platform Summer Festival where it won the Audience Choice award and is published by Brooklyn Publishing. My published monologues & duets include: If You Went Missing, Audition Arsenal for Women in Their 30s: 101 Monologues by Type, 2 Minutes & Under, Smith & Kraus; My Buddy List: Audition Arsenal for Men in Their 30s: 101 Monologues by Type, 2 Minutes & Under, Smith & Kraus; Cloud Jumping & The Baby Artists, comic duets, Winners Competition Series Volume 2: Award-winning, 90-Second Comic Scenes for Ages 4-12, Smith & Kraus.
Fiction Credits:
I’m in the process of converting a number of my short plays into short stories, including "Monarch," (first produced as a short play by Salem Theatre Company’s Moments of Play Festival), recently published as a short story in "Open Road Review," and "Singing Over Your Bones," (performed at the Our Voices Theatre Festival and the Culture Park Short Play Marathon), recently published as a prose poem in "Lingerpost.”