Each semester, we have the honor of profiling some of the incredible professional artists involved in our TDM productions. Our next artist spotlight this fall shines on Senior Lecturer on Playwriting Sam Marks! Sam is the playwright for the fall TDM production, Cells.

What inspires you as an artist and creative?

I'm quite obsessed with 'inarticulacy'. Characters, unable to fully express themselves due to social injustice, trauma, disposition, lack of resources, or other factors, that resort to broken or borrowed language, speaking in clipped, incomplete dialogue or forms of canned speech. I love to help these character ultimately find their words, their original language and they truly express themselves, even if it's just to recognize their condition. I find that cathartic. 

What excites you about Cells?

Several things! I'm excited about the question the characters of the play face: what it means to make a life in the arts? I'm excited about a multi-generational, multi location, plays that uses  non-realistic aspects, that is very much about material world. I'm excited to write about my family. I'm also incredibly excited to be working the Harvard students, TDM, and Morgan Green. 

What has it been like collaborating with the team on this project?

The play is very much about object memory. It's been so humbling seeing the remarkable work that the designers have done with this idea. Set, Lights, Sound. Costumes, Props all have helped make this very personal, very weird play a theatrical reality. I'm really honored by it.

What projects are you working on next?

I want to make something about our moment now. Not in a current events way, but more about our condition, specifically how our economic system/way of living affects interpersonal relationships. I'm using that as inspiration for a new play commission I received from Playwrights Horizons. I'm excited about an upcoming workshop of my play WHITE LIGHTNING at Intar Theater in NYC. I'm also in a writer's room for an FX/Hulu TV show.