Baltimore Playwrights Festival

Five Minutes with the Playwright: An Interview with Tom Piccin

  • March 5th, 2021
tom piccin
  1. RUTH is a recent play you’ve submitted to The Baltimore Playwrights Festival. What is it about?
    RUTH is a story about a woman who suffers from dementia. As Ruth’s health fails and her dementia worsens, she and her daughter struggle to maintain a connection, while Ruth tries to remind her daughter of what’s really important in life.
  2. What was the inspiration for RUTH? Did the initial story change once you began writing it?
    Two years ago my mother fell and broke her hip, and she was in a rehab facility for six weeks. To treat her pain, she was given opioids that caused dementia-like symptoms. I spent a lot of time talking to her and watching the caregivers interact with her and with other dementia patients. I could see the frustration and heartbreak on both sides when people who were working so hard to communicate couldn’t find the words or couldn’t make themselves understood. So I had the idea for a thriller where a person with dementia is the only witness to a crime, but no one believes her because of her condition. From there it became a story about a mother and daughter struggling to stay connected.
  3. When do you know you are ready to write a play? What do you need to have in place?
    Those are very good questions, and I hope to know the answers someday. For now, I just try to find experiences from my life that made an impact on me, and that other people may be able to relate to, and then try to tell the story in an engaging and unexpected way.
  4. Tell us about yourself.
    I have worked professionally in technology and project management for most of my career, but I also have a background in social sciences and I’m currently an adjunct professor of psychology and linguistics at the University of Maryland. I have been an amateur actor for many years, and it has only been within the past few years that I have started writing short plays. I have had a few staged readings and a few small productions of my plays, and hope to have more.
  5. What is coming up next for you?
    I am looking forward to being onstage again soon doing live theater. I have had enough Zoom meetings to last me for the rest of my life. And after having written several 10-minute plays, I am now working on my first full-length play.