ARTISTIC STATEMENT
I am a playwright who is passionate about “truth” - figuring out why/how life happens the way it does. I write dramas and comedies about today’s big issues and often place them in other worlds. People see more objectively from a distance. The music and poetry of life are important in my plays. I love to play with Magical Realism, Brechtian elements, and structures that are less masculine than the Aristotelean climactic structure.
I write to open hearts and minds and encourage empathy. My protagonists are survivors who manage the best they can, given the cards they are dealt. Major themes I am writing about currently are: family - those we are born into and those we make; survival; love; sacrifice; “home;” and living as the “other.” The two full length plays I am currently developing feature strong female protagonists who are hemmed in by worlds that won’t admit that crises exist.
MOTHER'S BLISS, MOTHER'S WOE, set in the late 1800’s, is the story of Mary Horan – a poor Irish Catholic Immigrant with bi-polar disorder - who must battle against the denial, misogyny, and anti-science of Irish-American immigrant culture to save herself.
In OH MIGHTY ISIS, Izzie, a teenage survivor of the Marathon Bombing, is re-traumatized when her soulmate, Akmed, is ripped away from her and she is denied the unconditional love she needs in her “perfect” home. Desperate to find Akmed, she turns to social media for help, and connects with a radical presence who offers her a potentially lethal solution to her isolation and despair.
MOTHER'S PEARLS, is a ten-minute slapstick comedy about two 50-something estranged twin sisters who use the ritual of prepping their mother’s corpse and the humor inherent in that situation to break down walls and create a path to vulnerability, truth and connection. These, and many of my other plays, are about lives that are filled with pain and then healed through love and sacrifice. I also write about true love - which is rare, but when experienced, can free a person to be their authentic self.
I have been working in the theatre for a LONG time – as actor, director, producer, educator and playwright. I founded a theatre company whose mission is to discover and develop plays by and about women and for many years directed and produced published plays and new works. I love the development process and being a director, but I find that I am now more passionate about story creation than bringing other peoples’ stories to life. So, here I am - a playwright who wants to create a more kind and empathetic world and empower those who experience my work. When an audience leaves my play, I want them to say “ Yes!…I know that, I see that, I feel that, I do that, or I hope I never do that, and DAMN that was exhilarating”
Kate Caffrey