Back Story

“All the world's a stage” and I've wanted to play on it since I could walk. When I was 10, my sister Charna and I teamed up to do Penny's Parties. Charna led the kids in games and fostered goodness while I entertained with simple magic and Disney hand puppets. I usually asked the adults to step out of the room while I performed and that kept our little business going for quite a few years.

Flash forward through Girl Scout plays, high school skits, college productions, playwriting classes, and theater workshops in New York and Chicago. For nearly 20 years I reviewed theater, films and TV for the Chicago Tribune.

 As soon as I stopped working as a critic, I started writing plays. I co-wrote the first two with Cheryl Lavin, creator and writer of “Tales From the Front” and my friend since 5th grade. The collaboration was pure joy. Until we got our first reviews...   

Our debut play “Celebrity Beat” was produced on Broadway --Broadway and Belmont. Based on our own experiences as pop culture queens at the Chicago Tribune, “Celebrity Beat,” was a wicked and prescient look at celebrity journalism in the early days of People magazine.

It was directed by David Zaks and I loved every aspect of it: casting, rehearsals, rewrites, publicity, hearing the audience laugh. “Celebrity Beat” was smart, political, and ahead of its time. Who cares about the critics anyway?

Our next play, “Solomons' Choice” was also a wonderful experience. “Solomons' Choice” is a family comedy about love, marriage and the mixed religious ties that can strangle our best intentions. Mick Leavitt directed. “Solomons' Choice” got much better reviews, a longer run, and a second production a few years later in Santa Fe, NM, directed by Eron Block. It's timely, funny, and if you're interested in producing it, send me an email.

Blue Sky

My newest play, “Blue Sky” is my first solo effort and certainly the strongest play I've written. I like to call it a tragicomedy about a hate crime. It's a contemporary piece about Eve Matthews, a young doctor who answers an online ad to practice family medicine in a small mountain town in Wyoming.

Eve's living her dream until she's called on to treat the town's high school history teacher, a white supremacist and fierce anti-Semite. He is enraged when he discovers Eve is Jewish. He makes a brutal attempt to scare her out of town, but Eve is fearless, and naïve, confident she can help her new patient deal with his anger in healthier ways. Things turn ugly--quickly, tragically. In the midst of the catastrophe that follows, Eve falls for the town sheriff and learns about the healing power of boundless forgiveness and love.

"Blue Sky” has had a staged reading at the Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago, directed by Dennis Zacek.   It is now being considered for a full production at the SPF (Summer Play Festival) at the Public Theater in New York, 2009.

My next comic play is in the works and I’m pretty sure it’s about death and dying.