I've received a few different gifts that have effectively changed my life. One came in the form of a question, from a 15 or 16-year old girl. After a workshop performance of the very first draft of The Thin Line, she said. "So what?" I checked my initial response of "Ouch" and listened to what else she had to say. She said more - "We know this. We know what eating disorders are, we know our friends struggle with them, but what we need to know is what do we do? So what can we do?" - but it was the "so what" that both shaped the subsequent versions of The Thin Line and You the Man and has played a major role in all of what Add Verb Productions does today.

With singular, piercing clarity, the question "so what" has made me as a writer, educator, activist stop, consider, and ask more questions. When I work with my own scripts, and when I work with youth in rural schools developing performance pieces, and when I work with artists who are employing their medium for activism, I ask, out loud, "So...what...?"

So what does real change look like? What are the methods that can be employed to bring about real change, and what are the potholes that can be avoided? So what do I want an audience to feel when they've seen a performance? I consider what I want them to know, and what I want them to do. I want them to ask of themselves, "So what can I do differently?" I want them to leave considering their choices, knowing what resources and services are available, and what still needs to be done. I want them to understand how they fit into the issue, and what accountability might look like. When I've asked university students to consider what makes for a good play, and what they would expect of a play written for activism, the list of everything that's inherent in playwriting for activism is also what makes for a good play, but more. I think audiences and actors want more - and Add Verb Productions wants them leaving asking "so what" as just the first part of the first question, and not just the only question.

I hope that as you read our website and witness the scope of what Add Verb Productions Arts & Education has done recently, what we are poised to do soon, and what the potential is for the future, I hope that you ask yourself, "So... what can I do to help?" We write and produce plays as if people's lives depend on it. And they do.

-- Cathy Plourde, Add Verb Executive Director