Interview with a Playwright - Elizabeth Heffron

Elizabeth Heffron talks about the experience - picture by Dan Tarker

Elizabeth’s strategy for writing her play? Go to sleep early. Unlike most of the other playwrights, she went to sleep at midnight and woke up at 4am to do most of the work. She turned it in at 8:05, with the official due date at 8am. “I used every single moment,” she explains.

As for the writing? “It went good,” she says, “it went really good. Because I love the theme lifting the veil, and I got 4 women, and I’m first. So I can’t lose because you know, no matter what I do it’s going to be new.”

So what does her play involve? Ritual, weddings, a post-industrial and an apocalyptic world. There are rumors that it might have something to do with a vagina, some play tonight definitely does.

Elizabeth has written for 14/48 before, though this is her first time outside. When asked how writing for 14/48 compares to not writing under a short deadline she replies, “you know what I love about 14/48 is it totally shakes you up.” It gets you out of the idea that “it’s got to be brilliant” and away from the responsibility of making it perfect.