Meet SJ Hodges | Playwright

We had the good fortune of connecting with SJ Hodges and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi SJ, what’s the most important thing you’ve done for your children?
If I had to boil it down to one word: modeling. My daughter is observant, empathic, aware. Like most kids, she watches (and mimics) a lot of what I do. When we lost her dad to brain cancer in 2019, I knew I had to model for her what grief really is…how it transforms your soul and the hard work it takes to heal and rebuild. And that journey had to be true. I couldn’t fake it – she can smell inauthenticity a mile away. I had to do that hard work on myself – for both of us. Now that she’s older and pursuing a life in the arts, it’s my job to model artistic risk – showing her how to take a project from the conceptual through development into a full production. It’s my job to model for her the self-assurance she will need to believe in her visions and see them through to the finish line.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
This year is a bit of a “return” for me. A return to theater as a playwright, a return to the stage as a performer and a return to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. My first Fringe was back in 1995 as a stage manager. I spent most of that August escorting actors to the infirmary, quietly promising myself I’d return with my own show. Thirty years, one marriage, one kid, an innumerable number of funerals and four cities later, I am finally making good on that promise. My new show, ALREADY HERE, opens at Gilded Balloon August 5th.

Personally, it’s a challenge to work again as an actress after focusing solely on my writing for twenty years. Returning to the stage now feels like a creative homecoming. Edinburgh is the completion of that journey I began at twenty-four. The festival’s mix of chaos, bravery, and incomprehensible imagination is exactly what this moment in my life is about: risk, reinvention, and the wild hope that joy, after catastrophic loss, is possible.

Thematically, ALREADY HERE explores this zeitgeist moment of humans entering emotional, romantic, and yes, even marital relationships with AI companions. The Fringe is one of the few places in the world where I can juxtapose the safety inherent in my AI’s immortality with the brutal finality of helping my husband die and it will be received not as murder or insanity, but as a deeply human and wholly contemporary struggle. I can’t wait to get back.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
What LA does really well is outdoor dining, outdoor movies, and big name talent. When you’re here, you have to hunt down your favorite bands or comedians. Most likely, they are performing at The Greek or Hollywood Bowl or testing some new material out at some tiny club you’ve never heard of…

For a more local vibe, you can pack a picnic and go to a Cinespia screening inside the Hollywood Forever Cemetery or on Sundays, there’s the big open-air food market (Smorgasburg) at Row DTLA.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My high school gifted & talented teacher, Deb Blackwood, was absolutely my biggest cheerleader from Day One. She encouraged me to imagine a world beyond Charleston, West Virginia – and then, we actually traveled to those places.. I sat beside her at The Fantasticks off Bway, stood beside her onstage at the Vienna Opera House. She commissioned two of my first plays for her high school theater company in Florida. She continues to be a presence in my life, always sending encouragement. Always reminding me of my strength.

Website: https://www.alreadyhereshow.com

Instagram: @sjhodges_writer

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheBeachWriter

Image Credits
Already Here production stills by Ian Zandi.
Poster design by Valerie Burroughs.