Jennifer Lane Bustance
Playwright, Arts Administrator
Astoria, New York USA
Where do you look for inspiration? Travel! Nothing inspires me more than visiting a new city (favorites include Prague and Barcelona) but barring that, I love to park it for a few hours in the Drama Bookshop and read whatever is on their wall of Staff Recommended plays.
What’s your favorite movie: All About Eve Song from a Musical: “Finishing the Hat” from eSunday in the Park with George Cocktail: I’ll take a glass of white wine over a cocktail any day. Book: Crime & Punishment, or Jane Eyre, or The Unbearable Lightness of Being or The End of the Affair or Revolutionary Road or… I could keep going (I love to read.)
What play or production changed your life? Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses and the SoHo Rep production of Sarah Kane’s Blasted. But really, other theatre artists have changed my life much more dramatically than any individual production. Sarah Ruhl, Chuck Mee, Kelly Stuart, Lucy Thurber, Stuart Spencer — these remarkable writers are also wonderful mentors and teachers. They’re the ones who have changed my life.
I feel most like myself when I… am writing. Or, more accurately, I feel most like myself when I have just finished writing: in that moment when I am satisfied with the work, before the dark cloud of self-doubt has a chance to descend.
What is your best escape? Video games. I think I enjoy them because they tell me stories and offer me small, meaningless tasks to finish, so I feel like I’m engaged but it couldn’t possibly matter less whether or not I’m good at it or I finish at a certain time, etc.
What’s the one thing nobody knows about you? I don’t know how to admit this, I think it’s going to out me as a bad theatre nerd, but… I don’t like Chekhov. There. I’ve said it. It’s out there. Please don’t judge me too harshly.
Jennifer Lane’s work includes Harlowe (developed under the mentorship of Sarah Ruhl, winner of the Alec Baldwin Fellowship at Singers Forum); and The Seer and the Witch (developed in the terraNOVA Groundbreakers Playwriting Group). Jenny is the Administrative Director for the LPTW and the Literary Manager for APAC. BA: Sarah Lawrence; MFA: Columbia University. jennifer-lane.net.
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