I am a playwright/producer who started as a musician and found myself writing when I became a mother. Groomed since elementary school to play classical piano, I rebelled in my teenage years to study acting while playing bass guitar in rock bands. My dedication to learning everything I could about theater led me to read and watch as many plays as possible despite being a “starving” artist in New York City. My early bad poetry and rock and roll lyrics gave way to monologues improvised on the streets. I eventually wrote my first play while teaching theater to NYC high schoolers about a man who was told Marilyn Monroe faked her death, so he faked his death to meet her.

My practice centers around a feminist aesthetic, and how gender affects the masks people wear to survive. A self-inventory revealed three central questions I explore in my work. How does trauma impact a woman’s development of both mind and body? How do women craft relationships while dealing with their traumatic wounds? and - How do women bind themselves to a prescribed culture for survival? Whereas gender is the central element of identity and the choices people make, society exerts power over that subjectivity, affecting the construction of social relations, in particular, how women relate to family, other women, and the political/cultural society at large.

Blog: The Experimental Writings of Diane Davis