Laughter: The Surest Touch of Genius

If you ask me to choose a characteristic to define the lens through which I filter my life and, therefore, my creative choices as a playwright, theatre artist, and educator, I will tell you every time, it’s laughter. I believe that there isn’t an experience, a life lesson, a theme, a story, a moment, or even a traumatic event that cannot be viewed through the lens of laughter. With appreciation for the full weight of a situation, knowing that if I wasn’t supposed to allow laughter to help me through the tough times, why do I have the ability to laugh at all?

In one stanza of Act 2 of his The Lady’s Not for Burning, Christopher Fry declares what I’ve always believed: that “laughter is surely the surest touch of genius in creation.” Fry’s character Thomas wonders, if the average person had been creating man, would we have thought to give him laughter, and he concludes, “that same laughter, madam, is an irrelevancy which almost amounts to revelation.”

That “irrelevancy” is at the heart of my passion to ignite imaginations and bring stories to life on the stage, first as a playwright, and then, as a teacher, director, stage manager, designer, and blogger. I want to infuse every production, whether I write it, direct it, stage manage it, or produce it with humor and heart, creating experiences that resonate long after the final curtain falls.