Janis Hirsch ’72 lives in Los Angeles and works as a writer and producer for television. She discusses how being a theater major helped her succeed in her career, as well as the personal experiences in her life.
Transcript
>> My name is Janice Hirsch. I am a writer/producer for television primarily. Primarily sitcoms in television but I have also worked in plays and musicals and screenplays. I live in Los Angeles and so that's where everything happens for me. As a writer I always say that I'm like a migrant worker and I go where there are oranges. So there are years, if I'm working on a sitcom, where it's a season. It's like a school year. The sitcom season is usually July through March and then it's going to work every day and the fun part is you sit in a room full of people and try to make each other laugh. If they're people who are like you and who you like, it's a pleasure. When they're people who don't share your sense of humor, it can be a little tough. So that's the sitcom day. Right now I've been working freelance because I'm supervising some young writers on their pilot and working on a couple of plays and a screenplay. So then I work at home and then it takes discipline because I just basically walk into another room and try not to make out with the dogs all day long, try to actually write. But I do tend to write pretty much every day or else feel guilty enough about not writing one day that I write twice as hard the next.
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