I’m so lucky. About a year ago, I was able to design my dream office, and this is it. My typewriter is my wedding gift from my partner. It’s a manifestation of his constant support and faith in me and my writing. Next to that is a postcard of Georgia O’Keefe’s “Sky Above Clouds.” The painting hangs in the art institute, and it’s been my favorite painting for 20 years.

The thank you note is from my students. They transcribed a quote from Sarah Ruhl, writing about her mentor Paula Vogel. “Teaching is unbounded by the classroom. Just as love is unbounded by time.” How beautiful and freeing to be unbounded while I’m unable to leave my house.

The framed image is a card that reads, “It is not the ship so much as the skillful sailing that assures the prosperous voyage.” It’s a reminder to me that craft is always there for me.

The Himalayan salt lamp and selenite wand provide clarity, as does my journal. And you can see that there’s also a globe nearby. I sit next to a window and love looking out at the sky. My favorite color is green, and the intense green of my walls, notebook, and globe contrast with the sky’s ever-changing moods. It fills me with profound peace and gratitude in these turbulent times.

This desk didn’t always live in my bedroom. It was recently squeezed into the space between my bed and wall because I needed a second workspace in my
apartment so that my partner and I could shelter-in-place together. The desk, like the partner and the sheltering-in-place, is a fairly new addition to my life.
It’s an antique (sized for a child,) with a mismatched chair and if you look closely you’ll see it has “Tony” inscribed upon it by some mischievous prior owner.

Who is Tony? I’ll never know. Perhaps you should ask Tara Mallen because she gave the desk to me–or rather, in a classic Tara move, loaded it into my car despite my emphatic objection that I didn’t need a desk and couldn’t actually fit it in my tiny apartment. I have to admit that I am now very grateful to have it.

As for the objects that surround me while I work: a smiley face coffee mug my mom gifted me after a trip. A plant I have miraculously managed to keep alive, interwoven with tiny lights that remind me of fireflies. An imperfectly repaired bowl my sister brought me from Prague that I broke when I moved to Chicago and packed it recklessly in a shipping box. A photo of my grandmother, Vera, a woman so deeply interwoven into the fabric of my being. And of course, the essentials of our Solo Voices Zoom process: an illegibly scribbled upon notepad, my laptop, and Kristin Idaszak’s thrilling and continually-evolving draft of Tidy.

This is a quick shot of my work space in Chicago that was hastily snapped right before getting in my car with my partner to drive eight hours to my parents’ house.
We wanted to have access to more nature and space during the remainder of the stay at home orders (if you’ve read this play, you’ll know the parallels are…strong).

Here you can see one of the hand bound journals that never leave my side – they store all my personal thoughts as well as notes from any current artistic process,a (dying) hand picked flower in a make-shift vase of a beer bottle brought back from a trip to Costa Rica, my (obsessive) pen collection (many…most… are erasable,
the PERFECT way to avoid messy pencil blurs in scripts while still being able to change notes as needed), and my roommate‘s bizarre animatronic dinosaur
that lives next to our desk. In a strange turn of events, it happened to be the perfect thing to have next to my desk while working on this play.

Also, if you look closely, you can see the sheen of the just-used-Clorox-wipe remains smiling back at you.

My work area is at one end of my dining room table. It gives me a prime view of most of the main floor of the house, so I can see what my kids are up to while I work. Also pictured are my notebook (I’d get nothing done without it), my favorite water cup (a wide-mouth Lagunitas jar), wrist braces (so much computer time),
and the schedule I make for the kids each day. It carefully plots out when they play, do school, and go outside, all so I can figure out when I work.

Right now, I am temporarily in Dodgeville, Wisconsin while quarantining. My desk is pretty simple. Laptop, mouse, portable printer, journal book, clear tape, wireless earphone, drop candy, scissors (in a glass cup, OLFA knife, exacto knife, plier, ruler, brush and brass rod.