Playwright Holly Jensen Downstage at Perishable
Since 1995, Perishable Theater in Providence has been producing and hosting their Annual International Women’s Playwriting Festival that not only draws in a whole host of audiences to converge in the city, but also gives up-and-coming female playwrights a unique and exciting opportunity to stage new plays they’ve written.
This year’s festival will feature a play called Lizzy Izzy written by new Providence resident Holly Jensen. Jensen, who works as a public affairs manager at Fidelity Investments, began developing her play three years ago during a playwriting course at Perishable. Whether it’s at her corporate job, or in pursuit of a creative story, Jensen is truly a quintessential people person. Her love for working with people is what keeps her focused at the job, and what also fuels her passion for playwriting.
Often intrigued by articles she’s read on the news, Jensen loosely created Lizzy Izzy’s main character, Isabella, through a story she read on the increasing violence amongst women. As Jensen will give audiences a glimpse into Isabella’s fascinating life, City News gives you Jensen’s in her own words.
How long have you lived in Providence?
I’ve lived in Providence exactly one year. Prior to that, I lived in Fall River and then, I grew up in Swansea, pretty much in Southeastern England.
Why did you make the move to Providence?
I’ve been working in RI since I graduated from college, first at Roger Williams University in Bristol and then at Fidelity Investments for the past seven years. So my job is very community-focused and I love the City of Providence and I love the State of Rhode Island. I grew so connected to the RI community because of my work with Fidelity. I work in the public affairs department and part of my job is fostering relationships between the firm and the community.
I fell in love with the community, and wanted to actually make it a part of my life and not just where I worked. It’s certainly a great place to be. I’m 33, single, and wanted to be where things are happening. Providence is definitely a happening city.
As a playwright, what do you enjoy most about having Providence as your home base?
I think for a city of its size, it has a lot to offer in terms of theater. You have everything from Trinity Rep to Black Rep and of course Perishable Theater. Then you have a number of other theater organizations, which from time to time do shows in Providence. I think the city offers a diversity of theater, which is always good for the community. If people wanted to get exposed to different styles, I think Providence definitely has a ton to offer in the theater arena.
As you mentioned, you work as a Senior Public Affairs Manager for Fidelity Investments by day. How do you balance the corporate job with your creative career?
I really enjoy the work I do with Fidelity. I feel lucky to have the job that I do that allows me to work with so many nonprofit organizations. So I think I’m okay living in both worlds.
In addition to my work with Fidelity, which does involve working nights and weekend events as well, I’m also on the board of Waterfire. I also serve on the Mayor’s Arts Investment Task Force, and this year I’m going through Leadership RI. So I’m keeping very, very busy.
It’s been tough and I don’t know if ‘balance’ is really the word for it! I think I’m just doing it, and just fitting everything in when I can. My work has to be my priority and I try to fit in as much creative writing as possible. Some nights, I’ll sit in my living room with my laptop, watching American Idol, getting my creative work done! I just do it.
Obviously, it’s paying off for you because your play, Lizzy Izzy, is one of the featured works in this year’s 14th Annual International Women’s Playwriting Festival at Perishable Theatre. Tell us about the play’s main character, Isabella.
Isabella is 18 years old. She’s Portuguese-American and comes from, as my director would say, ‘the wrong side of the tracks.’ She grew up in a tough neighborhood and was raised by a single mom. Her mom wasn’t really supportive or nurturing throughout her life, so she’s pretty much on her own. She sort of has that personality of pretending to hate the world but it’s really just an exterior that she puts out to protect herself.
The play is really Isabella’s story. It’s set in jail and opens up where you learn right away that she’s in jail yet you don’t really know why she’s there. The audience is taken through a journey of Isabella’s life throughout the play, narrated by Isabella, and so it’s really up to her to decide what she’s going to share with you at any given moment. So it’s not always chronological and she only recalls certain aspects of certain characters of her life. Again, she’s choosing what to share with you. It’s up to people to decide whether she’s reliable, or not reliable; or is she aware that she is or isn’t, or does she seem dishonest with herself as well. In the end, as the audience slowly realizes what she’s done and the impact it will have in her life, it’s also Isabella realizing it. She too is going on a journey to discover
herself.
Do your plays always have female characters as the lead?
No. I don’t think it’s a conscious choice either to make women, or men, the protagonists in my plays.
So when did you start playwriting?
I started becoming interested in playwriting in the summer of 2004. Prior to that, I’ve always been a writer. I was an English major in college. I always wrote poetry and short stories and creative non-fiction. I was trained as a journalist, did that for a while for the East Bay newspapers. In ’04, I started wanting to do more creative work.
I had tried to write a screen play at one point and I started some short stories but I just really felt like playwriting chose me, because I was always more interested in characters and what drives people to do what they do. I’m interested in the dialogue between people and the conflicts that may arise from them. Playwriting is like a two-way dialogue, more so than other types of writing, and in more ways than one.
The theater also has that wonderful immediacy and intimacy and it’s also very collaborative, which particularly for this show, has been so amazing to me. You know, I wrote this blueprint and this team of artists is just working together to build it. It almost seems like a magical experience that’s taken a life of its own. And I think that’s really neat.
Why were you drawn to this creative medium?
I really love working with people and you get so many interesting ideas from people that can enhance what you’ve done. You also have an opportunity to give them a chance to enhance what they’re capable of doing, too. It’s really special to me and I feel very close to the actors and my director, David Eliet.
I should mention that this play was developed through a playwriting class I took at Perishable Theater. In ’05, I took classes with David and started writing this play back then. He’s been my mentor for the last three years on this project. And now he’s directing it, which is great because he knows it so well and he’s got great knowledge and has just been fabulous in developing this play with me.
Where do you get your inspiration for your characters?
I think because I was trained as a journalist, a lot of my ideas come from news articles. So I’ll read something that will interest me, and then from there I just start letting it simmer in my head. Right now, I’ve got ten different ideas! I have ten notebooks at home, and I’ll hear a quote that might be funny in a play, and so I’ll make a note of it. It’s very messy and disorganized.
For this particular play, Lizzy Izzy, right around the same time I started taking David’s class, I started reading a bunch of news articles about the increasing violence amongst teenage girls and it interested me. So I started doing more research and found that there is an increase of violence amongst teenage girls. Twenty-five years ago, for every 10 boys arrested, there was only 1 girl arrested and now, the ratio is 4 to 1. So violence among girls has risen. Also the messaging to teenage girls has changed. Years ago was ‘nice girls don’t hit,’ and now it’s the ‘girls kick @$$’ mentality.
I’m a big wimp. I’ve never been in a fight my whole life. So this intrigued me, how aggressive girls were getting. And what I learned was that the same things that made them positively aggressive were also having some negative effects. It just interested me enough to explore it in a play. It’s not the overarching them of the play, it’s really Isabella’s story. But the character, Amy, who is a supporting actor, is modeled after that new American girl that is more physically aggressive.
What are some of the next projects you’re working on?
I’m working on a full length play right now, with a working title called Perverted Injustice, about a woman in her mid-20s who’s laid off from her job and becomes obsessed with posing as a 13-year old online and trying to lurch out predators.
I’ve also been working with Teny Gross of the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence because I’m interested in exploring the life of a street worker in a potential play.
I like writing about topics that are provocative and that create dialogue, that get people talking and leaving the theater with questions and opinions. I like pushing people beyond the 
black-and-white thinking and getting them to think about the gray areas, which is where I think we tend to learn most about ourselves.
In your opinion, what is the importance of an event like Perishable’s women’s playwriting festival to a city like Providence?
I think there are two parts to this. One, across the country, there could be more opportunity for new playwrights to share their work with the world. I think having a festival that takes new work by playwrights and shares them with an audience is exciting. So I think Providence definitely benefits from getting to see three new playwrights who are doing their work, versus some of the classic stuff that maybe folks have already been exposed to.
Number two I think that the fact that it’s a woman’s playwriting festival is also a good thing because women are underrepresented in theater. Having a festival that celebrates what women are doing in the field is a good thing.
As an artist, how do see yourself playing a role in creating a more vibrant arts scene in the city?
Personally, I want to be an advocate for the arts just because I think it’s really important and there are so many great arts organizations in the city, and state. If we can all work together and pull our resources to create a more vibrant arts community, I think that would be more beneficial to everyone.
I know that I’m committed to remaining in Providence for now and in the foreseeable future. I’m pursuing my MFA from Spalding University and so I’d like to keep writing plays and keep sharing them with the world. Hopefully that will include Providence.
Someday I see myself teaching and being able to inspire more young people to become artists – whether it’s playwrights, or screenwriters, or fiction writers. So I plan on sticking around and being as involved as I can.
An excerpt from Lizzy Izzy was featured at “Our Voices Together Festival" at Wellesley College in May 2007. Holly's short play, One Two Many, appeared in the 2006 Playwrights' Platform Summer Festival in Boston, where it received the Playwrights' Choice Award for Best Play. One Two Many was also produced in a number of festivals throughout New England and was filmed by Newton Cable TV. Her short play Cut appeared in the 2008 Playwrights' Platform Summer Festival in Boston. Holly is a member of Playwrights' Platform and the Dramatists Guild of America and she is currently pursuing her Master of Fine Arts in Playwriting from Spalding University.
Lizzy Izzy will run from October 9th to 12th. Showtimes are Thursdays to Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 3pm. For more on the 14th Annual Women’s Playwriting Festival at Perishable Theater, go to www.perishable.org.
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