A few years ago, as a reader for the Baltimore Playwrights Festival, I discovered a play called Someone Close to You by Melissa Borgerding, a promising new playwright.  I was completely taken by both the subject matter and the quality of Melissa’s writing. What began as an interest in the work quickly became something more: I moved from thinking about producing to actually doing it. I optioned the play and began a collaborative development process with Melissa, focused on bringing this powerful story to life.

Since then, the project has continued to grow. We took Someone Close to You out to Theatre West in Los Angeles for a series of staged readings that gave us feedback from live audiences and helped us to refine Melissa’s writing. The feedback that we got was unanimous. ‘Someone Close To You’ deserved a bigger audience. The response affirmed what first drew me to the piece: its emotional honesty, relevance, and capacity to spark meaningful conversation.

Alongside developing this project, I joined The TheaterMakers Studio, an organization founded by Tony Award–winning Broadway producer Ken Davenport and dedicated to training new producers in the nuts and bolts of the craft. Through this community, I have had the opportunity to learn, exchange ideas, and share successes with fellow producers—all of which continues to inform and strengthen my approach to shepherding Someone Close to You toward its next chapter.