Author Profile:  Anita Larsen

“If your first love is writing for the stage, then that’s also likely to be your last love.  That’s because — if you can get out of our own way and are lucky — you will have sensed theater's ancient roots, which are spiritual and sustaining.” — Anita Larsen

Unlike many others, I didn’t always want to write.  And I didn’t always love theater.  So my theatre background is freckled — acting dots here, teaching dots there, writing dots sprinkled throughout.  (Actually, these are metaphorical blemishes.  Please bear with me.)

The acting dots are fading, but they were the most lovely.  Masha, Madame Arcati, Hulbildibrorda — what?  Don’t know her?  Well, few do.  Some roles in children’s theater, Patalone being my only brush with cross-dressing.  Some forgettable women in broadcast commercials left dots that never amounted to much, but then they didn’t cost a lot, either.

The teaching dots — creative dramatics for kids, theatre history, scriptwriting — are all but gone.

It appears that the writing dots are what I’m going to take to my grave.  A clutch of books, some honored in minor ways.  A few articles.  Some corporate and commercial scripts.  Twenty years worth of monthly review columns of children’s books.  Other reviews for Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus Reviews.  A few theatrical scripts for adults and children of which some have won, or almost won, awards and two that effectively torpedoed the contest in question.  These are the dots that connect me to various editions of Who’s Who.

See also Anita Gustafson.