Press

BoldJourney - Meet Erica Wachs

I am a playwright and television writer. Sometimes, this looks like spending months sitting at a screen and waiting for an idea to spring to life. Other times, I am deep in revisions for a play or a script, and will sit around my apartment hunched around my computer, forget to eat or brush my teeth, and just write, often texting my trusted writer friends, “Does this phrase work? Does this line make you laugh? Did I address the thing you were confused about on page 56? Am I good enough?” A lot of the time, it looks like putting yourself out there and getting rejected. And then, those rarest of times, you are published, and produced, or hired, and you want to do the whole thing all over again.

PopTorah Podcast - “Maid” in America

Rabbis Michael Knopf and Jesse Olitzky are lifelong friends, pop culture fanboys, and lovers of all things Jewish. Join them every other week for a conversation about what’s going on in pop culture from a Jewish perspective and about Judaism through the lens of pop culture.

The new Netflix limited series, inspired by Stephanie Land’s bestselling memoir, is an extraordinary story of one young woman’s struggle with domestic abuse and poverty in modern America. Through exceptional writing, stunning performances, and gripping filmmaking, the show lays bare the realities of generational trauma, vicious cycles of poverty and abuse, economic inequality, and the woeful insufficiencies and inefficiencies of the social safety net in the U.S. Rabbis Knopf and Olitzky are joined by special guest Erica Wachs, a writing assistant on the show, to examine ‘Maid’ through the lens of the Jewish tradition.

ShoutoutLA - Meet Erica Wachs | Television Writer & Playwright

But as for why I pursued this as a career — why does anyone pursue writing? In high school, I wrote to come out. I wrote to grapple with my identity. I wrote to escape into a world where I had a say. In college, I wrote to make that say mean something — inspired by Paula Vogel’s “Indecent”; Branden Jacob-Jenkins’s “An Octoroon,” Guillermo Calderón’s “Kiss” — to find a way in which my voice could join other voices of political and social relevance and meaning while still cultivating exciting theater. Now, in my fifth scripted drama room, I would probably add that I write to entertain, which I think is so important in the art that we create. I write because, when I feel so moved by the world around me, my natural response — my only response — is to write about it.