THEATERICAL BIO

As a playwright and screenwriter, I am drawn to stories rooted in American aspirations and our struggles and challenges
to live up to them and the rich, evolving diversity of our immigrant nation.

Representative plays include The Hiroshima Daughter exploring the hopes and fears of a young woman scarred by the first
atomic bomb coming to America for reconstructive surgery, a son from a political family returning home to die of AIDS
coming to terms with himself and the family that rejected him in Sleeping with the Dead, the efforts of
an embittered Korean widow and am African American recovering alcoholic to find common ground in the aftermath
of the LA Riots in the comedy-drama Olympic Notions & Supply, and the human comedy of Symphony Pastorale,
a birth-to-death choral play in four movements for five actors and a conductor that dramatizes life’s hidden rhythms.
Additional stage work includes One Good Tree, Colors at Sunset, Summer Crossing, and the libretto
for the opera Crazy Nora.

My plays have been produced or developed at Yale Rep, Victory Gardens, Walnut Street Theater, Mark Taper Forum,
Ashland New Plays Festival, the Sundance Playwrights Lab, the New York Fringe Festival, London’s Orange Tree Theatre,
and Towne Street Theatre.

As Danceteller’s Playwright in Residence, I collaborated on Before Forever, a dance performance work about people
living with AIDS that was performed nationally, followed by a Russian American version that toured Russia and Lithuania.
As Producing Director of Yale Cabaret Hollywood, I produced an eclectic mix of plays, live performances,
and screenplay readings.

I’ve developed the wartime miniseries A Distant Promise about the Japanese American combat unit in World War II
for Sidney Poitier's production company, wrote the farcical screenplay Filthy Rich about the delusions of a uber
developer forced to hide out with the homeless to reclaim his empire, and dramatized the explosive dynamics
triggered by the Great Depression motivating dispossessed veterans or an impoverished immigrant
in the miniseries Saving America.

Additional writing for screen includes the political thriller The Messenger about a serial killer consumed by social media
and the road trip comedy Two Boys from Tennessee two good ole gay boys driving across the country for hot times
in West Hollywood.

I am the recipient of a Pennsylvania Arts Council Fellowship, a Yaddo arts residency, and two L.A. Dramalogue Awards.
I graduated from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale where I was a swimming, singing frog in the world
premiere of Stephen Sondheim’s musical adaptation of Aristophanes' The Frogs.