Being a lifelong artist and having owned a stained glass studio for thirty years, I needed another creative pursuit and started writing seriously at the encouragement of a dear friend and professional screenwriter after she read a sample of my work. I often blame her for sending me on the wonderful path I’ve been on for the last fourteen years, first as a fiction writer, and now as a playwright, and it was after another bit of happy coincidence, seeing the merry band of actors and directors preparing for a theatre festival at a church I was working on, that I thought, “Huh, I can do that...”. Little did I know how much work it would be to be invited into the lives of characters and to tell their complicated stories, and that seven years later I’d still be discovering who they are. Not Dark Yet is the product of that first bit of inspiration from which I continue to discover the truths and lives behind these characters and is the first in a trilogy of plays on the subject, the third of which is in progress. I’ve had the good fortune of joining the cohort of the Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive in 2021, and twice participated in the New York State Summer Writers Institute in Saratoga, NY. I’ve also had the good fortune of having online and staged readings of my plays “Not Dark Yet” and “Providencetown” and my ten-minute play “Lucky” was performed as part of the “Tales by the Brookside” festival in 2018. This play benefitted greatly from insights of the artists of Berkshire Voices, a playwrighting group nurtured by artistic director Jim Frangione through the Great Barrington Public Theater, and I’d of course like to thank New Surry artistic director Lori Sitzabee for her faith in Not Dark Yet, it’s truly an honor to have my play kick off the 53rd season of the New Surry Theatre!! And lastly, thank you for supporting playwrights and theatre, it means a lot to all of us!!

Lori has enjoyed working with this cast, crew and playwright. She has directed many NST productions, some favorites include: Appropriate, How to Transcend a Happy Marriage, and Fun Home. Some favorite roles she has played on the NST stage include those where she got to yell at Randall Simons. She looks forward to doing that and a bit more later this season when she will be playing the part of Annie in Misery! Lori would like to thank Billie Murray for trusting her in this process of bringing Not Dark Yet to life on our stage. Also, big thanks to this cast and crew for their hard work and dedication.