Richard, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
SPIRIT SERIES began out of personal tragedy. When my daughter was 10, we lost her Mom to cancer. So as a young girl, she began to ask the biggest questions in life, like “why do bad things happen to good people?” I was a professional screenwriter at the time, did not write for children and had no intention of working with young people. But I found nothing in my daughter’s life designed to help her meet this kind of hardship and adversity. I knew that stories can inspire, and was haunted by a question: could the lives of history’s greatest heroes—their challenges and triumphs–inspire kids on their journey to young adulthood? Could these stories be told as inspirational one-act plays that students study, co-write, stage and perform? When I finally realized that I could write these plays for young adults rather than children, I knew I had to give it a go.
