I’ve always believed the mission of a writer is to erase the margins between us: By creating authentic and fully human characters, we invite an audience to enter into the life of another, someone they may not have understood before. Thus we create empathy in an audience for the other and erase the margins between us.
COVID-19 has both created margins between us, and erased them. Social distancing is our best defense, so we remove ourselves from our neighbors. Large gatherings have been prohibited. LIU is now teaching online for the rest of the semester, and I’ve been forced to cancel the Military Veterans Workshop I was looking forward to hosting, as well as other gatherings this spring. But the pandemic has also erased barriers between rich and poor, privileged and aspiring, races and classes: it affects us all, from the First Lady of Canada to unsheltered people on the streets of Los Angeles.
Artists are society’s first responders in a crisis. We sound the alarm bells of injustice; we write the news that doesn’t appear on cable television because it is the news of the human soul. In this time of pandemic, it is vital for us all to keep writing: We are living through a time that must be recorded, must be examined, and must be memorialized. From Boccaccio writing the stories told in The Decameron during the plague times of the 14th-century, to Tony Kushner chronicling life during the AIDS crisis, writers have illuminated moments where the human spirit exultantly bursts through the darkest days, like an angel breaking through a ceiling.
So the LIU TV Writers Studio is open for business. We continue to teach the craft of shaping a story; our students are writing scripts; we are accepting applications and enrolling our next cohort. Whether you are in our program, or another, or writing in a garret alone - please keep writing. Because next year there will be stories to tell about how we survived, tales of chaos, confusion, and triumph. Those stories will erase margins in the days to come.
Ken LaZebnik
Director
