October 13, 2026

Hi Catherine! Tell us, where are you right now? 

I'm in Long Beach Island. I'm at the beach with my husband and my baby, just for the week.

Oh, fun! Thank you so much for taking a minute out of your vacation, especially. Did you always want to be a playwright?  

I started off with acting because I just loved theater. I'm a very emotional, expressive kind of person, so acting was definitely a good fit. But then I did feel pressure, being a woman, about how I looked, and that sort of depressed me. I started to gravitate to writing because I liked that it was more about what I was thinking about, my creativity. So it ended up being a better fit. 

And then I started working with Sherry Kramer, who was a faculty member at Bennington at the time. She was really influential. 

How so? 

Sherry was so encouraging, she was of all her students, to just follow their own instincts.

That’s the main thing I think about from Bennington: just trust yourself, be yourself, and that's what's the most exciting.

And I think as an artist, I always try to go back to that and not feel like I have to be some kind of commercial playwright. I can follow my own instincts, even if they're funky or weird. 

Oh, wow. So inspiring. 

I definitely was inspired by my Bennington education, especially when it comes to my philosophy of playwriting.

What I love so much about Bennington was how it helped me think. It gave me so much content to make art about, and it gave me the permission to feel that I can make art about whatever I'm excited by and not feel limited. 

I love that. What were your Field Work Terms as a Bennington student, and what impact did they make for you? 

The thing that was helpful for me was that they were all in New York, like in the New York theater scene, so that was helpful to create a base for me. Now I'm in New York, so Field Work Term definitely helped me to start growing the community and connect with local companies. 

I was a literary intern at New Georges, and now I'm an affiliated artist with them. And they're cool. They're a female-driven company, and they're very Bennington-friendly because they're really into female artists that like to take artistic risks. So I think they really like Bennington students.

What are the most important accomplishments in your career so far?

Getting an MFA from Ohio University under Charles Smith was definitely a highlight. Just getting to see my work done. I've had some regional productions around the U.S. and, of course, I've self-produced, but it's always exciting having a company take a risk on your work. I had a piece called The World Is Ending and Maybe That's Kind of Hot that had a production in Minnesota with a small company. Then it had a production in Germany.

It seems as if you're not afraid of a long title.

I do like a long title. It's true.

What are you looking forward to? 

I have two new plays that I've been developing. One is about the early 1900s and hysteria and female mental health. I'm having a reading next month in the city. 

Then I have another piece I've been working on with New Georges. It's about a crow in a retirement home. So I have some weird comedic things in the works.

I'm hoping at some point to have a reading at an Off-Broadway company. I work with small, down-and-dirty (and really fun) operations, but I'm hoping to get bigger companies excited about what I'm doing. I aspire to work with more established theater companies in New York.