We asked Brynne a few questions about playwriting, making theatre, and Bury Me. Here's what she had to say:

Q. What's your hometown?
I grew up mainly in Eureka, Missouri, which is a ride down the highway from St. Louis and just a county line over from the town where Bury Me is set.

Q. What brought you to Chicago?
I always wanted to end up in the Chicago theatre world. Right after I graduated from the University of Oklahoma, my family piled everything I owned in a van and moved me up here to get started. I always had the sense that Chicago supported new work and prioritized passion over profit, and so far that's proved absolutely true for me.

Q. Why playwriting? Was there a play you saw or a moment you experienced that made you realize you wanted to write plays?

I've written for as long as I can remember--as a kid I typed away at Pokemon and Harry Potter fanfiction on my grandma's PC, so it's always been a part of my life. In high school I fell in love with theatre, and then in college (where I majored in acting) I took my first playwriting class and it finally clicked that playwriting was the best of both worlds.

Q. Which playwrights or other artists have inspired or influenced you the most?
I was so blessed to have Laura Jacqmin as my first playwriting teacher. She exposed me to so many new plays and new ways of thinking about writing, and she was the first person to tell me I should write a full-length, plus her body of work is gorgeous and astounding. Dana Lynn Formby is another incredible playwright and educator who I've learned so much from by taking her classes, reading her work, and seeing her in the rehearsal room. I look up to and just adore Calamity West, and being a part of The Writers Room at The New Colony gave me the chance to work with Evan Linder, who's also a  genius. I'm also a huge fangirl about Sam Hunter, because so often his plays feel ripped right out of my heart and made 1000x better.

Q. How did you come to write Bury Me?
The seed of this play came from a friend whose family experienced one of the pivotal plot points, so that germinated for years. Then I went through my first real heartbreak, and started reconsidering a lot of my old political and spiritual ideologies, and so I finally had the fuel to build a whole play. I spent about a year writing the first draft and told no one what it was about, which kept me focused on writing the story so I could finally share it!

Q. What kind of theatre are you most excited about/passionate about?

I love stories that can only be told onstage, that wouldn't make sense or make an impact in any other art form. I live for moments in plays that feel magically theatrical, that effortlessly transform a blackbox or proscenium or church basement into another world. Also, theatre radically changed and continues to shape how I perceive perspectives outside my own, so I'm really invested in stories that show me points of view that I don't regularly access as a cis/hetero/white female. Theatre is such a powerful tool for empathy and change--I've witnessed it in myself, my family, my friends--and so I seek out bold stories that continue to blow audiences' perceptions wide open and offer a window into underrepresented experiences.