Playwright Has 12-Track Mind in NYC

How productive were you the last time you rode one of our trains? Whatever your answer is, Emily probably has you beat.

Her 2009 trip from Washington, D.C., to New York City was the inspiration to her upcoming play Track Twelve, showing at the New York International Fringe Festival this summer.

The play chronicles four train travelers waiting out a snow storm in New York Penn Station, a familiar scene for Emily who waited out a historic Washington, D.C., blizzard inside Union Station.

“The premise is all that’s inspired by that trip,” she says with a laugh. “The rest of the play has never happened to me. I feel like I need to make that disclaimer because there’s a lot about family.”

The play began as a short 15-minute piece but eventually grew into a full-length play. “The more I thought about the story, and the more I thought about the possibilities of what could happen in that type of situation, the more I wanted to grow it into a full-length play,” she says.

According to Emily, who was traveling by train the weekend we spoke to her, there’s “just something” about train travel. “Maybe it’s because I’m originally from Texas, and if you’re traveling somewhere there, it’s usually in a car or on a plane.”

Now that she takes Amtrak’s Northeast Regional service between places like Boston, New York City and Washington more regularly, she says, “I love that I can look out the window at all the towns and get up and walk around and get work done.”

Emily’s play is entitled Track Twelve and is the story of four travelers, a brother-sister pair and two business partners who were previously engaged to be married, who are stuck at Penn Station, waiting out a blizzard.

The New York International Fringe Festival runs from August 9-25, 2013 in NYC. 

Track Twelve runs Saturday, August 10 at 1:45 p.m.; Thursday, August 15 at 8:45 p.m.; Sunday, August 18 at 8:45 p.m.; Wednesday, August 21 at 5 p.m.; and Friday, August 23 at 2 p.m. Tickets for Emily’s train-tastic play go on sale on July 19 here.