What matters now is the lesson. The next morning Edson, a Washington native, takes the stage of the arts center at Sidwell Friends, where she went to high school in the late 1970s. She talks about Derek Anson Jones, a close friend since their days at Sidwell. Edson had planned to share the stage with him this morning. This is not what playwrights do.
Playwrights bow or smile or wave or blush.
Their instinct for dramatic action demands it. Nothing about her life up till then pointed to dramatic theatrical success. The two girls would invent dramas with Barbie dolls or act out fantasies of being college girls. She dabbled in drama at Sidwell, then went to Smith College, majoring in Renaissance history. Then she went to Rome to live in a French convent for a year.