IF YOU GREW UP IN BEAVER

By Julie Jensen


If you grow up in Beaver, Utah,
you know everything about everyone,
all two thousand people living there.

Who choked on a spoon, 
who drove into the lake.
Who gave birth to a child, 
who died in her sleep,
who got killed in a mine,
who threw scissors at her sister.

Who’s breaking up, 
who’s beaten up.
Who left her husband, 
who came back to his wife.
Who put her mother in the old folks’ home,
and who shot himself out by the chicken coop.

Then you move away. 
There are far more people,
but you know next to nothing about any of them.
Those other places, 
they can teach you how to write plays.
But Utah —
Utah teaches you what to write about.


Julie Jensen has written more than 30 plays; all of them have been professionally produced, 14 have been published, and a dozen of them have received national awards.  She has taught playwriting at six universities, and believes writing makes you strong, and writing plays makes you understanding.