About Writing

Playwrights aren't often asked to make an artistic statement. I guess it's assumed that we speak through our characters, which is true.

But not being asked, it becomes tempting to try to say a few words.

I am interested in what is human. And for me what is human has to do with yearning and trying and searching and sometimes discovering.

I like to create worlds with aesthetic wholeness.

Language and dialogue are a form of music.

I enjoy making people laugh.

But in lightness there is darkness and in darkness, some light.

I am personally less interested in intricacies of plot and action.

On the other hand, I love things that are mysterious--things that hold you to them with mystery.

I prefer simplicity of form and detail.

I believe that the stage is a place where ideas can be expressed as a form of passion.

These things come together in my plays.


About Productions

The work on this website represents much of the writing I've done over the past fifteen years. Over half of the plays here have had professional productions --a few, more than once. All of them have had audiences in the form of festivals and public readings.

In a some cases, the same production has garnered enthusiastic reviews and dismissive, even virulent pans. A few have been luckier and ducked the pans. If you are interested in locating reviews, please contact me for details. Wonderful actors and directors have done my plays. And audiences never cease to amaze me with their openness and readiness for new experiences and challenges.

The newer works, however, are starting their journeys differently.

I want my work to reach you wherever you may be, whatever you may do.

I hope you'll read the samples of my plays and contact me if you want to read more. And I hope you'll consider performing them. And if you do consider performing them, or even parts of them, or doing anything at all with them, please contact me first. The plays are protected under copyright law.

I am curious to see if by reaching out beyond the conventional ways and means of being a playwright, by simply putting the work out there directly, it may have another parallel kind of life, however unconventional that life may turn out to be.

By way of introduction: From the time I started writing plays, I've lived, for the most part, far away from the theatre communities in which my work might be seen to belong in terms of its language and traditions. Kept apart until now, physically-- finally, in cyberspace, I'm joining in!

--Lydia Stryk