Attending Amherst
Born in Boulder, Colorado to parents from New York, Fox's two older brothers who went to colleges in the Northeast. Fox said that "it was sort of assumed" she would follow suit. After deciding that she wanted to attend a small liberal arts college, she made a visit to the Pioneer Valley and "fell in love with the College."
From her first day on campus she enjoyed everything the English department had to offer. With preparation for her desired career as a playwright in mind, Fox declared herself as an English major. She studied with Playwright-in-Residence Constance Congdon at Amherst and then expanded her playwriting education with Professor Len Berkman at Smith College.
Beginning with Professors Congdon and Berkman, Fox considers all of her writing teachers to be her role models. While she admires many writers who inspire her, she said that she usually learns more from the people she meets in person.
Fox recalled the excitement she felt during the initial reading of the play that she wrote for her senior thesis. She encountered some resistance as she was the first student to write a play for her senior project through the English department rather than through the theater and dance department.
During the summer between sophomore and junior years, Fox enrolled in an intensive playwriting program at Vassar College. Because there was a professional company in resident, she was able to meet the professionals and sit in on rehearsals. This program made it clear that in order to pursue a career in playwriting "you move to New York City." That is exactly what Fox did, and she has been living in New York since she graduated from the College.
Here and abroad
Fox has had more than one dozen productions of her plays performed on stages across the United States and even overseas in London.
"Summer Cyclone," one of her most popular full-length plays, was produced in New York in February 2001 and published one year later. The play tells of complex, romantic webs involving an artist diagnosed with breast cancer, her ex-husband, a medical student and the medical student's flirtatious classmate. The play is set amidst a backdrop of doctor-patient ethics as well as the powers of art.
"Farm Boys," another of Fox's plays, opened in New York in 2004. The show, which is about a man moving from New York City to a homophobic town in Wisconsin, ran for three weeks at Blue Heron Theatre to nearly sold-out performances.
Not only successful with producers and audiences, Fox has also thrived in playwriting competitions. She has won several awards for her work. "The Piano Downstairs," "Fantasy Island" and "Clarity" were all national finalists in the Actors Theater of Louisville's Ten-Minute Play Contest. Another of her one-act plays, "Breakfast and Bed," was a finalist for the Ensemble Studio Theatre marathon. "Nothing Revolutionary," a full-length play, was a national finalist for the Princess Grace Awards Playwriting Fellowship.
In 2000, Ismail Merchant, the executive producer of Merchant Ivory, commissioned Fox to write a screenplay based on her play "Heights" after Merchant read a glowing review of the Ensemble Studio Theatre's production of the play. She turned the one-act play into a full-length screenplay, making it her first screenplay to be produced. The play revolved around three characters on a rooftop in New York City. The film, however, tracks dozens of characters all across the city, though it retains the three original roles.
Screenwriting
Fox saw screenwriting as a "new challenge" for her to undertake. She did assert that "navigating the business side of it is frustrating." However, Fox enjoyed the new challenges presented by the business world.
From an artistic point of view, she believes that screenwriting is much more visual and compressed than playwriting. The pace is quickened as scenes are typically than three pages long in comparison to plays such as "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," Edward Albee's work comprised of three lengthy, but incredibly dramatic, acts. "Heights," as another example, was originally twenty-five minutes long. When Fox adapted it into a screenplay, these twenty-five minutes were condensed into one four-minute scene in the film.
She also stressed that "theater is very writer-centered. When you have a play, you have total control." On the other hand, screenwriting involves many people who all have input in the script. They have the potential to change the writer's original intent, which can be aggravating for the screenwriter. Still, Fox conceded that writing movie scripts has allowed her work to reach a much wider audience and, in a practical sense, it has allowed her to make a better living.
"Heights," the film, follows the stories of a mother and daughter, Diana and Isabel, and their romantic dilemmas over the period of 24 hours. Diana, a Broadway actress, discovers that her husband has a new lover. Isabel, a photographer, considers leaving her fiancé, Jonathan, to pursue her dream job.
Filmed in New York in 2003, "Heights" premiered on January 25, 2005 at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah where it received much praise. The film was then screened at the Miami International Film Festival on Feb. 11. Finally, the film opened in New York City and Los Angeles last June before having a wider release debut in July. The talented cast includes Glenn Close as Diana and Elizabeth Banks as Isabel. Supporting actors include, James Marsden, Jesse Bradford and John Light.
While "Heights" and "Summer Cyclone" have been given the most critical attention, Fox's favorite play is a new piece entitled "One Thing I Like to Say Is." The play has not won any awards, but she considers it to be her best work yet and it was recently optioned to be produced sometime this year.
In 2001, a senior at Amherst called Fox and asked for permission to use "And Counting," previously produced by Creative Acting Company in 1999, for her senior thesis in producing, another new approach to the thesis project. Fox gave her consent and had fun watching the production in which a different person directed each portion. In fact, she marveled at how one part of the play was done better than anywhere else she had seen it.
Current works
Fox recently began work on a novel as a self-imposed break; it was her own project that did not require anyone else's help or money. When she "got stuck on it," a writer's worst nightmare, she realized that she did not have any formal training in fiction writing. She heard about a special program at Brooklyn College featuring affordable evening courses taught by Michael Cunningham, the author of "The Hours" and one of her favorite novelists. Taking advantage of this opportunity and its convenience, Fox applied for and got into the program. She received her Master's degree in fiction writing last spring.
Fox just finished a draft of a screenplay of "Stuyvesant Town," a story about two women-one black and one white-sharing an apartment. The real-world Stuyvesant Town was originally built for World War II veterans; yet, when African American veterans applied for residence, they were turned away. Fox has a personal connection to Stuyvesant Town because her grandparents lived there and tried to change this racist policy. Her screenplay reflects the racial tensions of that time.
Currently, Fox is also working on a novel and a new play called "The Honeymoon Hotel." She is constantly experimenting with new ideas and methods as she moves away from her older works such as "Summer Cyclone," which she regards as "fairly traditional in structure."
Aside from all of this writing, Fox teaches at both Gotham Writer's Workshop and at New York University where she teaches dramatic writing.
Final thoughts
When asked what inspires her to write her plays, Fox replied, "something grabs me and I feel really compelled to write it down." This "something" can be a character, a newspaper article or an issue that interests her. Sometimes she will simply "hear dialogue and start writing." Given that her works cover an array of topics, Fox takes pleasure in researching different subjects, a skill that she learned at Amherst.
As a former English major, Fox offered some encouraging words for current majors. "I don't think they should worry." she said. "I think that writing is an incredibly valuable skill in every workplace and the working world knows that." She admits, however, that creative writing is not as easy and she encourages students to be "really creative in what you choose to do."
Fox certainly follows her own advice as seen through her diverse and successful career. In the future, she wants to continue with her playwriting, screen writing and fiction writing. She is even considering film directing as a means to bring her writing to the public. "I want to get my work out into the world, whether it's on film or on paper," she said.