Teacher, actor, playwright, pixie wrangler. All things pages and stages and pens.
Teacher, actor, playwright, pixie wrangler. All things pages and stages and pens.
Stephanie Ann Foster grew up broke on a desert farm with ample thrift store wedding dresses. She earned an M.F.A. in Children's Literature from Hollins University and an M.A. in Shakespeare Education from the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. She spent four years pretending to be other people in schools across the US, Canada, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Mainland China, and the Philippines, and then she moved to Seoul, South Korea where she pretended to be more people for four more years and started a group of pretenders called Cut Glass Theatre. She also taught what it was like (and what it smelled like) when people pretended to be other people during the Renaissance, and she became the (now former) Conservatory Coordinator for the California Shakespeare Theater.
Stephanie Ann worked for years as a theatre missionary, but she was also thrown a "Congrats! You're Jewish!" party, and hasn’t missed a single Purim since. In 2021 she was a finalist for the Tennessee Williams Poetry Prize, and in 2022 her one-woman one-act "Mercy Otis Warren: Mother of the Revolution" was the winner of the American Heritage Award for Outstanding Performance in the State of California. She is the mother of three wyrd daughters. She tries to be herself, but that's not easy. That's why she puts poems on pages and why she brings stories to stages.
To learn more visit her scraps and scribbles page, Perfectly Conspicuous, and follow Whole Heart Pieces, an eighteen-year art project that recombines the items her daughters have broken on their journeys to womanhood.
I was honored to have my poetry collection Daughter’s Dance nominated as a 2021 finalist!
This imaginative large-cast stage adaptation of the beloved children’s classic has enjoyed seven youth productions thus far:
Yongsan International School of Seoul (November, 2011)
STARS Drama (September, 2013)
Actor's Youth Theatre (November, 2013)
Bordentown Theatre (December 2014)
Fruits of the Spirit Academy (May 2015)
Mosaic Children's Theatre (November 2015)
Shine Performing Arts (2017)
It is available as an e-script through Stageplays.com. For performance rights write to TheHessOster@gmail.com.
"I just read your Little Princess script to my students and they LOVED it and want to perform it. It was the best well written play that follows the book and movie and we have read at least five other Little Princess scripts in class. I had even bought Little Princess scripts from another company to start blocking and the more the students read it the more they hated it. They are sticklers for following the book/movie as close as possible...Thank you for letting us perform this version of Little Princess. It is the best version out there!" (Kimberly Knight, Mosaic Children's Theater)
Origins of the Play…
Mercy Otis Warren: Mother of the Revolution is a one-act monologue play that was born partly out of a love for period costumery. I’d purchased a damaged blue gown at the San Francisco Opera warehouse sale, and though it was tattered and looked like it had been designed for a haunted shipwreck scene, something about the dress spoke to me. Years later I had finally repaired the sleeves, and found the right silk stockings, and the right stays to fit me, and the correct side panniers—all without quite knowing what I would do with the costume!
Enter Cindi Daniels. She was a DAR administrator and had met me when my three daughters and I showed up to sweep off the graves of fallen heroes in our community. I was nervous that she might think me lazy. It took me years to gather the genealogical data to join the DAR, and by the time the application finally went through I had given birth to a daughter, and then another, and then another…three babies in three years! With three beautiful drains on my energy, I had been only minimally involved in my chapter. I was a former winner of the Citizenship medal (back when it was still given to one elementary student each year), but as a current DAR member? I was a flop. Cindi encouraged me to feel welcome whenever I did have time, and when she found out that I was a playwright and performer she invited me to share at a meeting. She gave me plenty of notice, and time to research, and when by chance I saw the famous John Singleton Copley painting of Mercy Otis Warren in her blue dress, I felt a spark.
Mercy is a fascinating and inspiring character. She is not the kind of false female hero that I see propped up so often nowadays—she’s the real deal. She really did record the entire history of the revolutionary movement, and she really did campaign for the improvements that became the Bill of Rights. She and her family made tremendous sacrifices for the American cause. Mercy was present for the major events of the Revolution, and with her writing (sometimes satirical, sometimes epistolary, but always anonymous), she was deeply involved in our country’s history in ways that are only now being recognized. I read much of her work, and considered several sources, but I’m especially grateful for the biography Muse of the Revolution, by Nancy Rubin Stuart, which helped me to understand the various roles that were assigned to Mercy throughout her life. Emphasizing her role as a mother is my own addition to this narrative.
I think what touches me most about Mercy is that she was so obviously gifted—everyone around her could see it, but, like many of us, she doubted herself. She wanted to act out of goodness, and not a desire for glory. As a mother of many who ran a busy household, she constantly second-guessed whether what she had to give was enough, or whether it was worth sharing.
I’m grateful to the people in Mercy’s life—her brother, her husband, and Mr. John Adams, who encouraged her to create and to share and to contribute. I’m grateful to the many women in my life—my mother, my teachers, and Cindi Daniels, who did the same for me.
This ten-minute play featuring ghoulish costumes, double-crosses, Edgar Allen Poe, and chicken-based martial arts, was performed at Redwood Day School's winter one-acts festival. Joyful confirmation that I STILL speak Middle School.
This middle school one-act premiered at Redwood Day School's annual one acts show. The play features a leprechaun, a witch, a fairy princess, a flatulent unicorn, and an adjustable-size ensemble of rainbow fart dancers. Do I speak Middle School? Yes, I do!
A short story foray into the realm of magical realism was included in the inaugural (2016) issue of The Crawl Space Journal.
My chapter "Finding Your Match" is featured in The Shakespeare Audition: How to Get Over Your Fear, Find the Right Piece, and Have a Great Audition (Applause Acting Series, 2015) by Laura Wayth.
Young actors may find the guide helpful in preparing audition pieces, and they can use my chapter in particular to view a chart of every available Shakespeare character/monologue.
We were interviewed by Niva Grant of NPR for a podcast through the Folger Shakespeare Library. Listen here.
My work on Shakespeare and the senses was highlighted in Teaching Shakespeare Magazine 7 (February 2015).
In 2014 the Ethiopian branch of the Peace Corps commissioned a collection of English-language children’s literature that featured regional traditions and Ethiopian character names. Each children’s author partnered with local contacts as sensitivity readers during the writing process, and then the finished pieces were published in-country as a four-book set, Eager for English. What a fulfilling project!
