My all-time favorite acting project was playing Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Yale University. It was a stunning production, outdoors in a garden in the fall, with leaves drifting through the air and an original score by a brilliant young classical musician. Acting outdoors without amplification is a major challenge. It’s a tribute to the training of our actors that every single player could be heard clearly by the audience! My favorite comment afterward came from a well-known professor of English who told me that he had seen over 30 productions of Midsummer, and this one was his favorite. We were all so lucky to be able to work together: director, actors, musicians, costumers. It was an unforgettable life experience.
In playwriting, one of my favorites was a full-length play I was commissioned to write while living in Albuquerque in 2012. Titled The Bell of Alameda, it was a historical drama based on extensive research about a massive flood in the city in 1903. As a history lover, I really enjoyed poring over the newspaper accounts of the flood and constructing characters who were based on real town residents at the time. Plus, the actors loved doing the play. Though I had relocated to a new state before the production went up, their emails to me afterward about what the play meant to them were really touching.
For my own poetry, a high point was performing with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra in 2019. Before their Beethoven concert, I read a poem that I had written for the occasion titled “Lighter than Air,” about balloonists during World War I. The theme was hope, and I could feel the rush of energy from the audience at the (literally) uplifting ending of the piece. We’re living in times when we need reminders that we can get through tragedy and discouragement by coming together, and I love this poem for carrying this theme.
My favorite directing experience was working with the high school students for whom I directed several plays including A Christmas Carol and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2013 and 2014. The raw energy and trust that good young actors will give you as a director is unmatched. This particular group of students was really smart, talented, and hardworking. They achieved far beyond what is typical for their age level. The best part was knowing that I had helped give them an experience of pure joy and creativity and teamwork. I had “paid forward” the blessings of my own training and passed on to a new generation the gift of being part of a transformative artistic event.
It’s hard to pick one favorite singing experience in theater, just because I had a number of great ones. I’ll choose my two Gilbert & Sullivan shows, just because the style is so unique, and G&S is becoming increasingly rare on today’s stages. Playing Edith in The Pirates of Penzance and the Fairy Queen in Iolanthe was the epitome of the nerdiest fun any singer could want.
I have a bittersweet favorite among my novels, because the actual process of rewriting it was the hardest task I have ever faced as a writer. My second novel, Sweeter than Birdsong, is now the one like best, despite the trauma of the rewrite! My editor at the time was going through a personal crisis that meant she delayed reading my draft for five months. By the time she got to it and decided it would benefit from an extensive rewrite (and I agreed), I had only two months to completely rewrite a 350-page novel. I remember dripping with nervous perspiration while sitting with my critique partner, laying index cards on the table with a trembling hand to talk over restructuring the outline. The creative anxiety was so intense that I had to take one day at a time, one hour at a time, sometimes one breath at a time. Somehow, I did it. And shockingly, the novel ended up being quite good. My copy editor described my rewrite as “heroic,” and if heroism means facing fear and coming through it, it’s probably true.
My fondest memory of a dance number goes back to the Yale Dramatic Association’s production Of Thee I Sing, a musical by George and Ira Gershwin. As a Court Justice and ensemble member, I was mostly there for fun and the group numbers. The first sopranos (I was one) got to sing some pretty amusing lines, and the choreography and costuming were great. But the best moment was when I found out I had been selected for a small-group tap dance number called “Hello, Good Morning.” I was always aware that I had less formal training than some of the really expert dancers, and I was so elated that I made the cut for that chipper, happy tap dance!
I can’t end without mentioning another favorite acting role: Liz Morden in Our Country’s Good, also with the Yale Dramatic Asssociation. This moving play by Timberlake Wertenbaker tracks the experience of British convicts who were deported to Australia as settlers. Liz Morden is the villain of the new colony, feared by many of her fellow convicts. As a slightly built woman, I had quite a task to convince my fellow actors and the audience that I was a frightening presence. But power is in the mind and soul, and also in the way other people react to you on stage, so we made it work. This character goes through a lot of pain during her story arc, during which she is sentenced to be hanged. It was a privilege to bring her story to life.
Creativity That Connects Us 