Playwright Awarded Virtual Writing Residency, Still Just Eating Cookie Dough & Crying All Day

by Catherine Weingarten. @sarahkaneissexy.

NEW YORK, NY - Now how did this happen?! Emerging playwright Emma Page Tippleton received a semi-prestigious “virtual writer’s residency'' from Apples and Hay Farm this week (which allows each writer can stay in his or her own home as opposed to traveling), resulting in Tippleton still just crying and eating cookie dough all day long but now doing it as a "Playwright-In-Residence", the local artist confirmed.

“I have dreamed for so long about doing a writer’s residency and it’s not at all how I thought it would be,” noted Tippleton. “I still am just eating cookie dough and crying all day. After three weeks, I did squeeze out one page for my new play about rubber duckies, so I guess that’s good? Maybe it’ll get better if I try to remind myself ‘I am on a writer’s residency’ even though I am still in my wildly small New York studio apartment, Purelling my hands 20 times a day?”

Tippleton had been hoping to be accepted into the writer’s residency for the past seven years, so is understandably disappointed by the actual program return. Jeannie Boggs, Tippleton’s BFF, was thrilled to hear of the news of her residency, but agrees that there has been little difference in her pal’s lifestyle.

“I’ve zoomed Emma three times this week and she’s doing everything the same as always- crying about how the American theater is dead and eating cookie dough,” noted Boggs with concern. “Wait, aren't residences supposed to, like, be at good looking, pastoral locations and not just at your apartment?”

Shannon Sheer, the head of Apples and Hay Farm, expressed her excitement about the great work Tippleton has been up to.

“We are so excited to hear that Emma has written a page from her new play, Rubber Duckies: I Love Them,” noted Sheer. “Although we are sure Emma was looking forward to picking Apples in the scenic hills of Vermont, we know she’s probably having a pretty similar experience in her small New York apartment alone during one of the scariest times in human history.”

At press time, Miss Tippleton claims to have gained five pounds from cookie dough ingestion, but lost five pounds from crying, so it’s all evened out. While she is confused by how a virtual writing residency is different from her just sheltering in place at her apartment, she is still open to another virtual writer’s residency in the future because, as a playwright, an unpaid residency is “the most recognition she can hope to get.”