medical benefits, I had to go to
group therapy, and I remember
gazing around the room as if I’d
encountered a feast for writings
to come. I didn’t write about any
of their lives, I felt as though it
would be a betrayal of the worst
kind. However, they did inspire me to bring mental health
awareness to the forefront when
bringing these monologues together. My goal with the play, as
with my books, is to show that
life isn’t out to get you. It just
doesn’t know boundaries, much
like what I did with my book series, “Life Knows No Bounds.”
I turned up the mental health
issues and suicide when my
nephew died, then Robin Williams (aka Mork from Ork) died
and then two weeks before the
workshop of this play, my sister died as a result, many years
later however, but as a result of
complications from a suicide attempt. I HAD HAD IT! I needed
NewJerseyStage.com
to do something. I was so mentally beaten and brutalized by
this issue of mental health and
suicide, and I kept referring back
to the feeling I had when I was in
group therapy and it really started to feel as if this was a calling—
a must write.
You’ve written novels, poems, film, and plays. What
points you in the direction of
the stage for a story? Well, my
grandmother was the director
for the Right to Read program
in Newark’s school system. So
she started me writing as early
as 7 years old and since we were
reading plays at the time, it was
actually plays I began writing
first and I never strayed. It was
only later in high school when
I read a short story by Charles
W. Chestnut that I began writing fiction. I wrote my first film
in 10th grade when I tried my
hand at writing a script, a sequel
to the gang movie, Warriors. I
2015 - ISSUE 10
126