Rachel Bykowski Chicago Playwright

What I write

My characters are gritty and flawed. They’re sinners, mothers, daughters, friends, lovers, heroes, and villains all tangled in these knots of words I call my plays. My characters navigate the complexities of their existence while trying to discover who they are when no one is watching. 

We’re all walking contradictions. We say one thing, then do another. My plays live and breathe that hypocrisy. I enjoy writing imperfect characters to match our flawed, imperfect world. Life has no inherent meaning, allowing my characters to embrace life’s meaninglessness and forge their own paths.

Within my plays, I write to explore what it means to be a woman and how women change their families’ legacies. I am a born and bred middle-class, Chicagoan. I often use my writing to explore the war between class and privilege. Recently, I’ve been fascinated by what the world is and what it will become. I use some of my plays to forecast the role of technology and humanity. At the core of all my plays, my plots navigate the tricky terrain of fate, free will, and the absurdity of life.

How I write

My plays have fun in the dark. Sometimes nightmarish. Sometimes violent. Always rusty, sweaty, and covered in dirt.  I use humor and satire to delve into the vile and grotesque. But within all the blood and muck is love, hope, determination, and a lot of gallows humor.

I feel the most comfortable writing in post-modern realism and naturalism, where I meld multiple mediums to tell the story.

I start with an image (static or dynamic). I don’t start writing until I discover my second image. These two images are the opening and closing images of my play. I write to figure out how we got from that opening to the closing.

Once I have both images, I ask myself why this is a play (and not a book, movie, poem, podcast, etc)? I must have a firm understanding of why this piece of writing can only be performed onstage.

One of the ways I figure out if this is truly meant to be a play is by creating at least one unproducible element featured in the play. Creating something that is thought to be unproducible provides a positive challenge to me (my writing) and my fellow collaborators. It is in the unproducible that theatricality lives.

Why I write

I want to encourage my audiences to question what floods our social media feeds, news headlines, church sermons, and dinner table conversations. With the acceleration of the digital world, we are losing the ability to think critically, lead with empathy, and actively listen to what’s going on around us. I want to contribute to raising our collective analytical and emotional intelligence by creating worlds that embrace the meaninglessness of life. This way, we have the opportunity to decide what values to invest in. My goal is for my audience to feel completely in control of their lives.