Dallas, Texas

100 West Writing Studio

Janielle’s commitment to the power of written and spoken language leads her to experiment across diverse mediums, including playwriting, podcasting, public performance, and large-scale text installations.

Janielle is equally interested in how characters acquire their beliefs and knowledge about the world as she is in the story arc. Many of her projects begin as auto-fictions that flesh out personal experiences requiring greater introspection. Her works bear the marks of a deeply-inquisitive mind wrestling with the disillusionment that develops as we shift away from the people and institutions we naively clung to in our youth and articulate our own ways of being in communion with the world.

Residency Focus: Inspired by her personal experiences growing up in an evangelical community, religious quandary and fervor are at the heart of Janielle’s ongoing projects. She is working on a new play called “Heaven’s Gates, Hell’s Flames,” about a church in Texas trying to put on a play. Also in development is an outline and early interviews for her next podcast that explores the complex origins of white evangelicalism in the United States. While here, she finished a draft of a new play commission from Dallas Theater Center about the infamous murder of Kitty Genovese which coined the term “bystander effect.”