ABOUT SANDRA DE HELEN

In the early days of my playwriting, I wrote only comedies, and those were mostly with music. It was fun, and I liked entertaining people. Now, I’m working on dramatic pieces, and not necessarily linear in structure – I still like entertaining people, so it’s always about the story, or the characters, preferably both. I’m a big fan of the language-based playwrights like Mac Wellman, Amy Wheeler, Joseph Fisher and Caryl Churchhill. On the other hand, I also love Sandra Dempsey’s work, and Lanford Wilson and John Patrick Shanley.

I’ve studied with Maria Irene Fornes, and with Matt Zrebski. On my own, I’ve studied from New Playwriting Strategies by Paul C. Castagno. I learned playwriting by reading, writing, and producing plays beginning in the political 70’s.

With Kate Kasten, I co-founded Actors’ Sorority, a women’s theater company in Kansas City, Missouri. When I later moved to Oregon, I founded the Portland Women’s Theatre Company. Most recently (2008), I am a founding member of Penplay a group of playwrights and screenwriters dedicated to developing the new work of multicultural voices.

I’ve acted and directed with other theater companies as well, but mostly I simply write plays. This allows me to focus on getting better at the craft, and it also allows me to see many more plays.

My plays are comedies or dramas or musicals or some combination. They’re long or short. Some are based on other fictional characters, a couple of them have political backdrops for the stories about the characters, but all of them have stories to tell. I’m told that I’m good at dialogue, that my characters have distinct voices.

Some of my plays have characters from mid-Missouri, where I was born and raised. With these plays and monologues, I hope to preserve a way of speaking that is fading away. By the time my grandchildren have grandchildren people won’t talk like that anymore. If you’d like to hear how my grandmother spoke, read “Auction Day” or “Common as a Loaf of Bread”. Or listen to my radio play “Christmas at the TNT Truck Stop” – the Maggie character is based on my grandmother. Inspired by a true story, as they say.

To keep up with my latest work, watch the home page for upcoming productions, new audio files, publications, and so on.