Meet the Playwright

**Mora** writes character-driven comedies under a blanket in Pittsburgh.

Her alien comedy SPACE GIRL (Playscripts, Inc.) has had over twenty-five productions in schools, colleges, and community and professional theaters. Her work has received development and support through the Pittsburgh Public Theater, City Theatre Company, The Hangar Theatre, Alliance/Kendeda, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Pittsburgh Opera, the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, the Sloan Foundation, and the Kennedy Center’s Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center Fellowship. She holds a B.A. in Creative Writing and Theater from Oberlin College and an M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon University. She teaches screenwriting at Point Park University and middle school playwriting at Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12. www.moravharris.com.

What's your relationship to Mt. Gretna, PA?

MH: My parents used to take my sister and I to Mt. Gretna every summer. If a tiny town in central PA is sounding to you like a strange place to go on vacation, you're right, it definitely was. It's primarily a place to go read and nap and do nothing. Now that I'm older I appreciate it more as a peaceful place to escape to, but at the time I felt like we should have gone to Disney World.

Where were you when the pandemic descended March of 2020?

MH: In March 2020 I was at home in Pittsburgh. I was really fortunate to be safe and healthy and able to stay home from work but I was also (like everyone) completely freaking out, worried about friends and family, washing my hands constantly. Everything I had been looking forward to was getting cancelled and postponed and moved online. I watched a lot of TV and read a lot of articles. I remember feeling like, "Is this the apocalypse, and if it is, why is it so boring?" I was looking for a reason to keep writing and feeling all this pressure to make King Lear, but also seeing all this stuff online about how no one wanted to ever see a play about this time. Art-making felt really frivolous but also like a tether to all the things that I was missing and craving from the world around me. I started to write a lot of really silly comedy during that time just as way of creating little pockets of joy for myself within my own mind.

MH: It's all I know how to do! I think for me humor has always been the easiest way to bring people together and to approach difficult topics. It doesn't feel at all formulaic or mathematical to me, it's completely tied to human emotion. Laughter is warm, it's physical, and it's delicate,—it's so easily transformed into tears. I love that.

What do you like about writing comedies?

Do you have a favorite line in Indoor Cats?

MH: Hard to pick a favorite! But an exchange I come back to a lot is...

JULES: I don't belittle your work.

WILLA: I teach at a school for the Blind.

JULES: As if you haven't made that perfectly clear...

It makes no sense for Jules to respond that way, there's zero logic to it. But there's an emotional logic to it that feels really authentic to their sister relationship. There's history and jealousy built into but also an understanding that this is not a real fight.

We're so excited to have you in Chicago for opening! What are you most looking forward to about your trip?

MH: Deep dish pizza. Jk, I'm so excited for Indoor Cats to be released into the wild! Red Theater has brought an amazing group of people together for this show from the actors to the designers, to everyone involved. It's just a really moving experience to see this weird play I wrote about the thing people said not write plays about being brought to life with so much care by such good people. I can't wait to see it.