JustArts:  Can you tell me a little bit about the play? What is it about?

Batsheva Moskowitz:  So it’s called “Coffee”. It’s placed in a coffee shop and there are three different scenes going on: the barista and the waiter, a son and a mother, a boyfriend and a girlfriend. It kind of switches between the three different scenes. And they are all under the theme of different types of relationships, what people expect of you, and staying true to your passion ... So they all have that theme.

JA: What inspired you to write and direct this play?

BM: At first I didn’t think I was gonna write a Quickie. But one day I thought of an idea for the structure of a play, and then I started thinking about theme ideas … [It] kind of evolved from there into what it is now.

JA:  How long did it take you to transform this idea to a play?

BM: So since the idea, it was like a week of thinking of different themes and then two weeks to go over it and writing it, then submit it. So three weeks in total.

JA: What is your past experience with theater?

BM: I’ve never written a play before. I do write poetry and short stories and things like that. I love writing and I also love theater. Last semester I was in “Noises Off.” ... and since I was really little I did a lot of theater camps. I actually went to a program called BIMA. It’s at Brandeis ... it’s a pre-college summer program.

JA: Have you been working mostly on the creative writing parts of theater or the acting parts?

BM: Mostly I’ve been on the acting side of it. So it’s really cool to be sitting on the other side and also to be able to direct it … and to understand the other perspective. I’m always the actor and but now I understand the director’s perspective.       

JA: What do you consider the most difficult part of producing a play?

BM: When I first wrote the play, I had a specific vision for it. So, I wanted to direct it because I wanted to be able to bring that vision to life. It could be hard to write something and then give it to someone else. But it’s also a cool process cause there’s many artists and many creators and a lot of collaboration with different people. But it was really cool to be there for all of it and have that idea, write it, cast it, and figure out who I wanted in it ... and actually bring [it] to life with those characters. So it was really cool to be there for the whole process.

JA: Now that you have worked on this project, what is something that you are looking forward to being involved with in the future?

BM: It’s making me want to direct a full play. I also want to take a playwriting class, since this experience showed me how much I love playwriting. I think it would be cool to experience other aspects of the behind-the-scene works.

   —Luke Liu