Before Juilliard, I studied directing with Robert Woodruff and Anne Bogart at Columbia. My years at Columbia were perhaps more formative than my years at Juilliard. It was in Robert Woodruff’s directing class that I tried my hand at playwriting. Robert encouraged me to keep writing, even though my first plays were five minutes long and consisted mostly of one actor saying the same thing over and over again. (I’m still drawn to repetition, but I tend to create more expansive palettes now.) I’ll be forever indebted to Robert and Anne for encouraging me to experiment, to ask questions, to think outside the box. They opened doors for me I had no idea existed.