Last November, Colette Freedman walked through London’s West End, excited for the international preview of her new musical, Mozart: Her Story. Though she was far from friends, family, and her beloved greyhound Frieda, she was on cloud nine, walking on hallowed ground for lovers of theater, anticipating the show. When the show opened at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane—the oldest theater site in London to still be in use as a theater—she sat in the audience and took it all in.
For Freedman, this was one of many highlights in a career as a prolific writer across many genres. She has dozens of screenwriting credits, published plays, and several novels to her name. She is also a longtime teacher, having mentored hundreds of students, helping them progress as dramatic writers and even stage their own plays and film their own movies.
During her weeks in London, Freedman balanced the artist’s lifestyle with her duties as a mentor in the Antioch MFA in Creative Writing. And once back, just before the holiday break, she learned that she had an amazing opportunity: she had been offered a job as the Antioch MFA’s first-ever Teaching Faculty in Dramatic Writing. She was thrilled.
Having her works staged and teaching may seem like two separate worlds, but for Freedman, these two lives are intertwined. “I love teaching so much, and I have become a better writer because of my students,” says Freedman, “Honestly, as much as I love writing, acting, and producing, I think that teaching is my superpower.” This work all comes together in her theory of creative practice. Here’s how she puts it: “Life is short. Too short to not pursue your true passion. But when you pursue it, you have to do so passionately and unapologetically. We as creatives keep waiting for opportunity to come knocking at our door; instead, we have to create our own opportunities by busting that door down.”
One of Freedman’s current MFA mentees, Amalia Mora, describes her as a “militant optimist.” It’s a fitting title. Freedman has inspired students at Antioch University with her energy and enthusiasm for over eight years, and she’s not slowing down. Instead, Freedman is looking towards the future, towards continuing to build Antioch’s reputation for screenwriting and playwriting, and towards creating more creative work in collaboration with others.
Teaching: It’s In Her Blood
Born in West Point, New York, Freedman spent her formative years in Milwaukee and then Baltimore. One thing stayed constant—the fact that she was raised by educators. Her mother, Sharon, is a retired middle school English teacher, while her father, Robert, is a renowned political science professor who still teaches at John Hopkins University.
As Freedman got older, teaching had never really crossed her mind. As an All-American lacrosse player and Philadelphia Field Hockey Player of the Year, she thought she’d become a coach. “My first teaching gig was coaching women’s field hockey and lacrosse at Colgate University.” She recalls, “I realized with the stipend they gave me, I could take classes and get my degree. The only MA they had was in education. So I did it. I taught Shakespeare to kids in rural Upstate New York and got my diploma.”
Though she had an MA in Education, teaching still wasn’t her plan. Instead, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue her dream of acting and writing. For over twenty years, Freedman grew her name as one of the top ghostwriters and script doctors in Hollywood. Along the way, she wrote the play Sister Cities—a hit that she went on to adapt both into a novel and into a screenplay that became a feature film.
She initially fell into teaching when a friend told her she’d be good at it. Freedman thought, Why not? It turned out to be a life-changing decision.
In 2017, she started teaching at Antioch. At first, she was helping develop the MFA in Writing and Contemporary Media that was then being started on Antioch’s Santa Barbara campus. At the time, says Freedman, “I didn’t even know how a professor dressed.” But she got over her nerves in a classically Freedman way. As she explains, “I would just post selfies with #ThisIsWhatAProfessorWears.” When the Santa Barbara MFA was combined with the long-established MFA on the Los Angeles campus, Freedman led the establishment of Dramatic Writing as a genre in the program. (Previously, the official genres were Poetry, Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, and Writing for Young People; today, students can also choose Translation as their primary genre.)
“Stop Asking for Permission to Make Art”
On Freedman’s website, she has chosen as her tagline, “Stop Asking for Permission to Make Art.” This is a throughline in all of her work, both as an artist and as a teacher. She strives to inspire others to just do what they want to be doing—especially if that’s writing. “I hate when excellent work sits on your computer,” she says. “It needs to breathe. Whether a play, a book, a podcast—anything really—there is absolutely a way to have it made. You just need the confidence and chutzpah to do it.”
Freedman first learned this decades ago. That was when, as an actor, she wasn’t seeing roles that she wanted to play. So she decided to write roles she’d want to pursue. This led to her career in screenwriting and playwriting. (Listen to our Seed Field Podcast Interview with Freedman, “Writing for Film and Stage Requires Collaboration—and Sometimes Just Doing It Yourself.”)
One of her first playwriting endeavors was a play titled First to the Egg. This short play is about a nerdy sperm who convinces a self-important egg that he is “the one”. Like most of Freedman’s work, which combines humor and pathos, it’s comedic but also touches on deeper themes. For Freedman, it came from a feminist urge to prove that women’s roles can be badass. “It’s not that I only write about women—which I really do, it’s just I don’t find men’s stories particularly interesting,” says Freedman.
First to the Egg was a success. The audience loved it, especially women, and the positive reaction proved to Freedman that women wanted to see themselves in more interesting roles. She then adapted the Euripides play Iphegenia in Aulis, writing all the dialog in Iambic pentameter (Freedman is a self-declared “Shakespeare nerd”), and she wrote a series of one-act plays at the Odyssey Theatre called “Deconstructing the Torah.”
Soon after, Freedman wrote Sister Cities. This full-length play tells the story of four estranged sisters who reunite for their mother’s alleged suicide. The play brings these sisters together as they delve into the trauma of their mother’s poor decisions and realize their mother’s mistakes, realizing how they ultimately made them into the strong women they’ve become. Sister Cities was a hit play at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, and it went on to be produced internationally, translated into several languages and staged over 30 times. Freedman also adapted Sister Cities into a novel and the screenplay for a feature film. When the film was made, it starred Jacki Weaver (Silver Linings Playbook), Alfred Molina (Spiderman), Jess Weixler (Teeth), Stana Katic (Castle), (Michelle Trachtenberg (Ice Princess), Troian Bellisario (Pretty Little Liars), Amy Smart (Crank), and Tom Everett Scott (La La Land).
Since Sister Cities, Freedman has produced and written films such as Quality Problems, 7000 Miles, and And Then There Was Eve. In between those projects, Freedman has written many Lifetime thrillers with her writing partner Brooke Purdy, and over a dozen of them have actually been produced and released. “Writing for Lifetime is fun. It’s like playing in a candy store,” says Freedman, “There’s a really specific structure and arc these characters take and if you understand the structure, they are easy to crank out. Working with so many different executives teaches me to navigate egos and personalities… lessons beyond the page which I can then impart to my students.”
She also works as a producer. The latest film she’s produced, Pilgrim, premiered at Cinequest this March. A multi-year project, the story follows a woman named Joe (played by Scout Purdy) as she navigates mental health and grief after she loses her mom. With a five-thousand-dollar budget, this feature film explores the outdoors as Joe and her father Tom (played by Doug Purdy) hike the Pacific Coast Trail. MovieMaker featured the film in their coverage on Cinequest.
She’s also executive producing and starring as Amelia Earhart in the upcoming podcast Cheating History. This podcast, written by Nunzio DeFilippis, Christina Weir, and Jennifer Sterner, is a social justice-charged anthology about rewriting history’s wrongs. “One of the coolest things about producing is that you have a say in casting,” she says, “so I was able to recommend several Antioch MFA students for roles.” Three Antioch students ended up being cast in significant roles, and as Freedman says, “I couldn’t be more thrilled.”
In addition to her full load of teaching, Freedman is looking forward to a revival of her first musical “Serial Killer Barbie” in New York City this fall and is working on her new Untitled Lacrosse Play harkening back to her origin story – a play about 12 teammates navigating life on and off of the field.
An Inspiring Mentor
Over Freedman’s eight years at Antioch, she has mentored hundreds of students. She is not only a prolific teacher, she also remains in contact with many of her students after graduation—and she even has collaborated with several of them on projects after their time at Antioch.
For one of her students, Antioch’s Associate Director of Admissions, Ozzie Rodriguez, working with Freedman was liberatory. “Though we were coworkers at the time, I had expressed to Colette that I secretly wanted to explore my screenwriting endeavors,” he says. “Her response is forever emblazoned in my mind: ‘Then do it.’ It was because of her friendly push that day that I started grad school, learned to focus on the jumbled thoughts in my brain, and felt more empowered to speak my voice.”
Across interviews with numerous past and current students, a consensus emerges that Freedman can be a direct and sometimes bracingly honest instructor, but more than that, she is someone who will light the fire beneath you and get you to write. “Colette is a force of nature—direct but loving,” says recent Antioch graduate Paula Williamson. “Her passion is contagious, and her energy pulls you in.”
The Importance of Community
“Truly generous, continuously encouraging, and deeply committed to the writer’s life” are the words Lisa Locascio Nighthawk, Chair of the Antioch MFA, uses to describe Freedman. Locascio Nighthawk is delighted about Freedman’s new role as Teaching Faculty. As she says,“Colette is an integral part of the Antioch MFA, and we’re so grateful to have her join us as a full-time faculty member. She is always thinking about ways to make our community more resilient, inclusive, and welcoming, and I find her tireless commitment to her students inspiring.”
For Freedman, part of the joy of working at Antioch is getting to hire other screenwriters and playwrights to work as mentors in the Dramatic Writing program. “I have an amazing team I work with,” says Freedman. “Joy Kecken, Ross Brown, and John Cariani are three phenomenal writers, each with a resume that proves their worth as mentors. Without them, this program wouldn’t be the same.” (Read about the Antioch MFA’s recent inclusion on MovieMaker’s list of the 30 Best Film Schools.)
The four of them each work in one-on-one mentorship with their students, and then they and their students all come together once a month for Book Circles. Before each Book Circle, the students are required to read a piece of published work, be it a screenplay, stage play, teleplay, novel, or craft book. And each month, the Dramatic Writing department brings in the writer of said work, giving a personal experience for students to discuss these works with their authors.
“This is something I’m proud of,” says Freedman about the monthly Book Circles, which are an innovation inside the MFA. (In other genres, typically,y all of the students who are working with a specific mentor gather into a small group to discuss what they read that month.) It’s especially inspiring for students to get to share a Zoom call with sometimes quite prominent dramatic writers. “Fortunately, our mentors have a significant network of working writers in the industry who are more than happy to generously give their time to our students. ” says Freedman. “It’s fun to have students read a play or script or television pilot and then be able to have intimate conversations with the writer. When I was in grad school, there was a class called living writers which always impressed me and I always wanted to do something like that. I guess now I am.”
Along with the Book Circles, there are also weekly check-ins amongst the entire Dramatic Writing department, bringing together the four faculty and the roughly twenty-five students working in the genre each term. This might be Freedman’s favorite part of the whole program. “In this current climate, things are tough for our students and faculty, and we’re all over the country,” she explains. Plus, as she says, “Writing can be incredibly isolating.” The check-ins offer a chance for community—Freedman’s central focus. “When someone is having a really rough week, they can reach out in our check-ins, and there’s an overwhelming support,” Freedman says. “Everyone feels a little less alone. And that’s the best thing a writer can have: a community to support them.”
