Singing Loudly

I've been asked a lot by people why I chose to go to law school instead of getting an MFA in either theater or creative writing or just write with no higher degrees. These questions aren't easy to answer because they involved many different decisions on my part. Probably the most basic decision was whether or not I wanted to write as a playwright or for film. There are people who are successful at both (David Mamet is the obvious candidate) but by and large it's easier to get sucked away from the theater world and write for Hollywood. I was very concious of that when I was deciding if I wanted to go on to law school or to an MFA program.

It wasn't a difficult decision for me to determine that I did not want to just write. I wanted to go on and get a higher degree in writing or in law or in both. This was a personal reason for me that might not hold true for other people. In undergraduate I was an English and Political Science double major, so I had relatively little experience with theater. The interaction that happens between directors and actors was largely foreign to me, despite the fact that I was heavily involved in high school level theater. Actually, my high school experience made me question all the more how professional theater operated. It was around the middle of my Junior year that I really began writing plays and submitting them in contests, to theater companies, and to summer festivals. I was lucky enough to be recognized by people with enough power to stage some of these, so I was able to watch some of the process that occurs. It wasn't enough to make me confident enough not to go on for an MFA.

When I applied to MFA programs I tried to stick to ones that gave a pure playwrighting focus. I was heavily leaning towards the Yale School of Drama, Brown, and a few other programs. However, I was waitlisted by Yale and admitted by NYU's Tisch school and a couple others. At the same time I was applying to law schools and found out that a couple schools were willing to give me enough money to seriously consider it. I decided on law school at that point because NYU, while wonderful, broadly focuses on playwriting, screenwriting, and television instead of really limiting it to playwrighting. My thought is that sometime in the future I can try for Yale again and see if I can weasel my way in. Law school has been a wonderful experience thus far, so I certainly don't feel bad about my choice.