The Secret Life of the Proletariat

If you’re like most people, you know a little bit about me, but find that this is not enough.  No, you must know more.  Even if you know a lot about me, chances are you find that there’s no such thing as Too Much About Karen Wurl.

Some exciting factoids:

I was born, like most Chicagoans of my generation, in Chicago.

I wrote my first play when I was about nine years old.  I am the first to admit it was not a very good play.  (It was an allegory.)  I have improved some since then.

I am massively, massively in student loan debt, not to mention the other sorts of debt I am in.

I have lived in: Chicago, Rolling Meadows, IL, Marietta, GA, Kalamazoo, MI, Madison, WI, and, most recently, Lubbock, TX (if you can call this living – eh, you probably can).

I’m older than I used to be.

I was once quite the homemaker.

But seriously, folks.

I’m a playwright, and a semi-retired slam poet.  The texts of one of my plays and a collection of stories and poems is posted here.

I’m currently completing coursework for a PhD in Fine Arts, Theatre Arts, at Texas Tech University in (sometimes oddly) beautiful Lubbock, TX.

I’m interested in: stage ghosts, feminist theatre, adaptation, and Jewish/Yiddish theatre.  I’m especially drawn to The Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds, by S. Ansky, recently nicely adapted by Tony Kushner.  (But despite the indisputable sufficiency of the Kushner Dybbuk, I intend to create my own Dybbuk – a comic, feminist Dybbuk – as part of my dissertation.)

I am a teacher.  At Tech, I have been teaching Intro to Acting and Theatre Appreciation.  During my MFA in creative writing at Western Michigan University, I taught Thought and Writing (their first-year required writing course) and Playwriting.  Before that, I was an adjunct at Kennesaw State University, teaching both Composition I and Composition II.

I am the mother of three incredible, bright, talented, wonderful grown daughters, whom I currently live very far away from and miss the heck outta.