I am a playwright.

Like many who love theatre and dance, I am drawn to storytelling in all its forms—especially narratives that transport us to worlds other than our own, whether realistic or surreal. Since abandoning social media in 2020 and replacing scrolling with reading, I finish well over a hundred novels and plays each year. That immersion has deepened my belief in the power of narrative to challenge, delight, and provoke.

As part of my work, I collaborate with Cory Norman from the School of Theatre & Dance, our Director of Marketing, and with Rose Theatre in Washington, DC—a company that has become an invaluable creative partner. Each year, Rose Theatre helps us develop a new play through staged readings with professional actors, followed by talkbacks with an engaged and candid audience. Led by Artistic Director Leslie Kobylinski, this process is consistently generous, incisive, and bracingly honest. We value it so much that we write a play each year specifically to take advantage of the insight offered.

Our most recent collaboration in DC was a screwball comedy—our first venture into the genre. [Think What’s Up, Doc or Bringing Up Baby.] Comedy, especially the screwball genre, is deceptively difficult; it depends almost entirely on timing, and timing is elusive on the page and in a staged reading. The event was so successful that audience members stayed afterward to tell us how much they enjoyed the play. But what surprised us were the reasons many of them gave for attending at all.

Several audience members—longtime arts patrons, many of them seniors—remarked that they would not have made the trip into DC had the promotional material not promised laughter. “Come for the laughs; stay for the conversation,” the tagline read, and that mattered to them. In the current climate, they explained, they are less interested in stories that revisit political, racial, or societal unrest. The world already feels unsettled. What they crave from the theatre, at least right now, is respite—work that allows them to escape for a few hours, to laugh, and to breathe.

That conversation brings me to two challenges we face repeatedly. The first concerns season selection. I have long believed that universities should stage narratives that community theatres often cannot: edgy plays, reimagined classics, and stories that unsettle us—works that complicate truth and demand intellectual engagement. 

I still believe that. 

But as Leslie reminds us each time we collaborate with Rose Theatre, performance is for audiences. We do not exist without them. While our mission is educational, we cannot ignore audience needs, especially when those needs lean toward escapism rather than confrontation. Balancing those priorities—education and accessibility, challenge and invitation—remains one of our School’s most difficult and necessary tasks.

The second challenge is our resistance to criticism.

One of the great strengths of our work with Rose Theatre is the depth of critical response we receive—not only from audiences, but from the artists performing the work. I will admit that it can be disheartening to hear that a play requires significant revision. But that, of course, is the point of the process. Critical response exists to help us improve, and we are grateful for it, even when it stings.

In educational settings, however, “criticism” is often treated as a dirty word. Students (and colleagues) sometimes forget that praise, too, is a form of critical response. When we invest deeply in a project—whether a play, a dance, an essay, or a thesis—we take ownership of it, as we should. Yet because that work feels personal, criticism can feel personal as well, as though disagreement were an attack rather than an opportunity.

In the arts, performance is public, and public work invites response. That response—favorable or not—is how artists learn, refine, and grow. Grades may be one familiar metric of success in the classroom, but audience and patron reactions are another, and they deserve to be taken seriously. We may disagree with those who dislike our work, but if we refuse to listen, we forfeit one of the most powerful tools for growth.

I have my theories about why we have become so resistant to opposing viewpoints—from the rise of social media to the overwhelming flood of information and competing truths—but excuses are beside the point. What matters is our willingness to listen, especially to those who critique our work.

Returning once more to Rose Theatre: yes, audiences praised our most recent play. But they have also offered sharp criticism of earlier work—moments when our storytelling was far less clear than we hoped. That feedback was disappointing at first, sure, but it was also invaluable. We create art to share it, and if we are unwilling to hear what others think once it is shared, then we may be in the wrong profession.

Critical response is the foundation of a healthy educational and performative environment. If we are to grow—not only as artists, but as humans—we must learn to welcome rather than resist it.