Scripting Her Path Writer Alexis Scheer takes on a wide range of subject matter, from the stage to the screen.
March 3, 2025
Alexis Scheer
Photo by Gabrielle Carrubba
Award-winning playwright Alexis Scheer (BFA 14, musical theater) made her mark in 2019 as a fresh theatrical voice with her New York Times Critic's Pick horror play Our Dear Dead Drug Lord. She has since drawn acclaim for plays that take on a vast range of subject matter and tone, from tragic explorations of war and PTSD in the off-Broadway play Breaking the Story to the comedic crime caper Laughs in Spanish. Also a writer for TV, film, and musicals, Scheer made her Broadway debut in 2023, adapting the book for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bad Cinderella, and wrote the stage adaptation of Jerry Herman's Mrs. Santa Claus, which will premiere this year at Goodspeed Musicals. Here, Scheer discusses her path from musical theater performance to writing, and the connections she made as a Boston Conservatory student that carried over into her career-including meeting her now-husband Dan Ryan (MM 15, choral conducting) on the BoCo Facebook Craigslist.
Talk about your process for developing ideas for your plays. How do you know when an idea is worth following?My approach is very visual, so usually the idea I'm starting out with is simply something I'd like to see onstage, like girls around a Ouija board or a woman in a press vest and helmet. This image could be inspired by a book I'm reading, an evocative photo or piece of art, or a childhood memory. And I know the idea is worth pursuing if I can't shake the image out of my head. But then the process for each play is different-sometimes I dive into writing, while other times I spend years turning the idea over in my head and doing research. And while my work is varied in tone, content, and form, I've also come to realize that I really just keep posing different ways to ask the same question: What does a woman's ambition cost her?
How did you arrive on the writing path? I've been writing plays since I was a kid, and it was actually part of my high school curriculum (I went to the amazing New World School of the Arts in Miami). When I got to BoCo, there were no formal opportunities to explore playwriting, so I created them myself-with the theater company I started, Off the Grid, and also with an independent study. After graduation, I stayed in Boston to act, direct, and produce, and eventually I became hungry for more formal writing training. So I followed my curiosity to Boston University's MFA playwriting program, and that's where I felt a profound alignment between my craft and my purpose. And the rest is history!
I really just keep posing different ways to ask the same question: What does a woman's ambition cost her?
-Alexis Scheer
Has your background in musical theater performance helped your career as a writer?Yes! My acting experience has always informed the way I write. And now that I'm actually writing musicals, it's all come full circle. Having that foundation in the practical application of the form has been the greatest advantage. What's also been fun are the unexpected moments when my musical theater BFA comes in handy-like when I was writing on the television show Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin and got to help shape one of the characters who was a ballerina because I was the person in the writers' room who had years of ballet training to pull from.
Alexis Scheer joined her former professor Paul Daigneault for a Q&A with the Theater Division to discuss her play Laughs in Spanish.
Photo by Sanjana Bellapu
The people you connect with artistically or personally as a student often tend to be your future collaborators. Could you talk about some of these relationships?Where do I even start? There's Christian Denzel Bufford (BFA 14), my sophomore-year roommate, who I sent the first draft of Our Dear Dead Drug Lord to in 2017 when he was a company member at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which led to both my and the play's first professional workshop. Then, in 2019, Our Dear Dead Drug Lord was premiering off Broadway, produced in part by Ben Simpson (BFA 11) and Joe Longthorne (BFA 12), who I had kept in touch with after knowing them as students. And then there are my former professors who I've gotten to work with in a professional capacity all these years later, like Paul Daigneault, who programmed Laughs in Spanish at SpeakEasy Stage as part of his final season as artistic director, and Liz Hayes, who was recently the voice and dialects coach for Breaking the Story off Broadway. Liz brought out the playbill of Romeo and Juliet that I directed as a student, and I cried-I couldn't believe she held onto it for a decade! And then, obviously, there's Dan Ryan, my favorite BoCo connection, who I ended up marrying.
How did you and Dan meet? We met via the BoCo Facebook Craigslist when I graduated in 2014-I posted in search of a guitar I could borrow, and he lent me his. We reconnected four years after that and then got married in 2022. And I got to keep the guitar!
Dan was also the composer on Breaking the Story. How does working with your spouse compare with other collaborations?All the qualities that make us great life partners-love, trust, respect, communication, and joy-are what make us great artistic partners. And working with him is different from working with other collaborators because of the shorthand we share. We have a finely tuned sense of each other's aesthetic, taste, and expertise, and so many of the experiences I draw on for inspiration are shared with him, which helps us get very clear and specific in the work.
Learn more about Alexis Scheer and her latest projects.
READ: STAGES 2025
Scripting Her Path first appeared in the 2025 issue of STAGES, Boston Co
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
28/08/2025
IBC stand 5.F81
Wowza to Reveal Next-Gen Video Streaming Innovations at IBC 2025
Amsterdam, August 28, 2025 Wowza, a leader in video streaming infrastructur...
Scripting Her Path Writer Alexis Scheer takes on a wide range of subject matter, from the stage to the screen.
