Though “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” is screenwriter Sofia Alvarez’s first feature film, she’s been writing for the majority of her life. As the Baltimore native told the Baltimore Sun, she wrote and directed a play inspired by Sylvia Plath’s poetry in high school and regularly worked at Baltimore’s Charles Theater. She pursued literature and theater at Vermont’s Bennington College before supporting herself through the Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program.
After college, she found New York playwriting less that profitable. She then turned to Los Angeles, and sold “Brooklyn Nannies,” a show based on her experiences as a New York nanny, to ABC studios in 2012. The series was never made, but Alvarez went on to lend her writing talents to USA’s “Sirens” and FXX’s “Man Seeking Woman” before returning to New York to work on her play “Friend Art” at Second Stage Theater.
Upon its release, “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” instantly captured the hearts of Netflix viewers across the globe. Based on Jenny Han’s bestselling novel of the same name, the romantic comedy follows teenager Laura Jean Covey (Lana Condor), who processes her emotions by writing love letters. When the five letters she never intended to actually send are suddenly mailed out, she enters a faux relationship with one recipient to avoid confronting another.
Alvarez pulled from her own experiences while “staying true to the warmth of the book,” a clearly successful approach. She’s penned the film’s instantly-demanded sequel and was one of five women who made Variety’s 10 Screenwriters to Watch list last year.
This industry success, however, has not eclipsed her relationship with the theater scene. If anything, her involvement in both has catapulted. As she told The Interval, “Sometimes people will say, ‘But you’ve done so much in TV and film, why are you still writing plays? Or what are you still doing in New York?’ And it’s like, well, being a playwright makes me a better screenwriter. And I only became a screenwriter because I was a playwright,” she stressed.
Alvarez and longtime colleague Nicola Korzenko recently founded the Blockchain Theater Project (BTP), a new theater company partly funded by cryptocurrency donations that promotes creative production through “rotating artistic dictatorship.”
According to Alvarez, the “key problem” in theater — similar to the issues in Hollywood — is “that at the major theaters the artistic directors rarely change – so you have the same ‘gatekeeper’ choosing the plays that will be produced for 30+ years.” At BTP, each play is instead chosen by the playwright of the preceding play, a method that not only encourages artistic collaboration but relies on it.
“I have found playwrights to be very supportive of one another,” Alvarez said. “It’s a really nice community that can help bolster you up, but when we’re all forced to compete for one spot, especially one spot for a woman or one slot for a person of color, we get pitted against each other constantly.” She continued, “So we [wanted to] have something where we’re saying, ‘Yes, I want my play to be produced, but I also want your play that I love that I’ve seen six amazing readings of and I don’t understand why it hasn’t been produced, I want to see that play up too.'”
Alvarez’s latest play, “Nylon,” premiered via BTP at New York’s Theaterlab earlier this year. Inspired by Doris Lessing’s “The Golden Notebook” and featuring Sheila Vand (of Ana Lily Amirpour’s “A Girl Who Walks Home Alone At Night”), “Nylon” follows an estranged couple who confront both their past and each other after four years. Following its run, Alvarez picked the BTP’s next production.
As Alvarez sees it, this is the way to truly impart change: from the top. “The only way to really expand is to change the power,” she explained. “Nothing will ever [drastically] change if you’re only like, ‘Okay, well, you can have a spot.'”
“To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You” premieres on Netflix February 12, 2020.
Previously on Writer to Watch…
Grace Nkenge Edwards of “Insecure” and MTV’s New “Daria” Spinoff
Katie Silberman of “Booksmart” and “Set It Up”
“Insecure” Scribe Amy Aniobi
Marquita Robinson of “GLOW” and “You’re the Worst”
“The Little Drummer Girl’s” Claire Wilson
“Speechless” and “Friends from College” Scribe Broti Gupta
Sierra Teller Ornelas of “Superstore”
“Sierra Burgess Is a Loser” Scribe Lindsay Beer
“Atlanta” Emmy Nominee Stefani Robinson
