So You Can Hear Me

About the Project

So You Can Hear Me is based on my experience as a twenty-three year old first-year teacher in the South Bronx. This work interrogates several different issues thematically. At the top of the play, I focus on the transformation of the grittier reality of New York from my childhood during the 1980s to the multitudes of issues that arise with present-day gentrification. The current climate within the school system reflects these issues in complex ways. Through this work I explore how safety, aggression and resistance are negotiated within the space of a school and how the larger economic and political climate of the city informs the lives of students and teachers. So You Can Hear Me is a play about voice, and also works as a love letter to the youth— and their culture— that emerges from New York City. Its language speaks with urgency, swagger, vulnerability and ultimately— an honesty that I dramatize for the stage. The work is an exploration of the universal human desire for love. Through interconnected narratives, each character voices an essential desire to be seen and heard, clearly.