About Amy
I am a Boston-area playwright, producer, and author of many plays. After spending the past few years researching and writing about notable American women, I am refocussing to write about ordinary people faced with extraordinary challenges. This was the theme of THE SQUARE, a play about a veteran of the Iraq war, as well as that of A COLD DAY IN SUMMER, a play, set in Maine, about a mass shooting at a camp for rich kids. Both plays ask, how do we respond honorably to a crisis, then how to we move on?
I am also privileged to be a planner and featured playwright with Her Story Is, a collective of women based in Iraq and the US, dedicated to dialogue and collaborative co-creation as a way to achieve reconciliation between the two countries. As a Her Story Is member, I co-ordinate the projects, plan meetings and look for fruitful partnerships as in the ones we are building with the AlMutanabbi Street Starts Here Project and the Iraqi+American Reconciliation Project (www.reconciliationproject.org). With colleagues from Iraq, Tunisia and the US, I am adapting a short story about an Iraqi women's experience interviewing refugees into a play. Our planning meetings take place in Arabic, English and French. Very exciting!
In this time of fear and uncertainty, I am learning so much from my Iraqi colleagues who are struggling with the threat of Covid and the challenges of physical and social distancing. All this, after years of war and economic instability, Iraqis know a lot about impermanence. Several years ago, as we were planning the first meet up, one of our Iraqi colleagues said something about how Americans like to plan three, six months in advance, the implication being that if we planned something it would happen. She reminded us that's something Iraqis can't do. More recently, she wrote, about the current situation, "We will continue to write, paint and live, despite everything." She added that if we had funds for the meet up, it would happen. We just couldn't say when.
Here in the US, we believe that things will improve, that we will be able to get around more easily. We like to think that the things that give our lives meaning, theaters, gatherings, as well as time with family and friends, will be available to us once more. But when? The answer isn't as clear as it used to be. We continue, despite everything.
Amy received her MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. She is a former nurse. She founded Blackbird Plays and Productions, LLC. Amy is a board member for Fort Point Theatre Channel. Amy is a Network Playwright at Chicago Dramatists and a member of The Dramatists Guild.
You can find her on Facebook or at amymerrill6@gmail.com