Over his four years living in New York, Kuritzkes has had an impressive array of residences at the likes of Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, and the Edward F. Albee Foundation, and was part of Ars Nova’s Play 2014 to 2015 Play Group. On the side, he’s something of a YouTube celebrity, with 22,000 subscribers and video views that range from 12,000 to 2.2 million. Recently, he has been co-writing a pop album, Songs About My Wife, with unconventional lyrics (“Even though we’ve got a baby, we’ve still got time to get crazy when the baby’s asleep“) and addictive beats.

NAME: Justin Kuritzkes

AGE: 25

HOMETOWN: I’m from Los Angeles, from the Valley.

FAVORITE PLAYWRIGHTS: Most of the playwrights that inspire me don’t put stuff on that often, but one of them is definitely Wallace Shawn. Another is Caryl Churchill, Edward Albee, my wife Celine Song, and Sarah Kane.

FAMILY HISTORY: My mom is a real estate lawyer; my dad’s a gastroenterologist. There weren’t that many creative people in the house, but my uncle, who’s a screenwriter, was a big influence—seeing that he was a person who’s job was to create things.

CREATIVE BEGINNINGS: My high school had a playwright’s festival where they would do 10 to 15 minute plays, so I started writing plays for that and I kept doing it. I knew from a really young age that I wanted to be a writer. I thought I was going to write novels, but I haven’t really given that much of a shot since I started writing plays. I thought I was going to do that from ages 10 to 15 or something, and then I started writing plays. I got some very positive feedback, but more than that, just people—teachers or friends—who seemed to really connect with the plays and thought I should keep doing it.

FROM THE FRINGE: I had this show at the Fringe Festival in New York the summer between junior and senior year of college. Someone who had been a reader for the festival really liked that show, and we started collaborating a bit together. He did a reading of this play, and one of the actors who was in that reading knew somebody at Playwrights Horizons named Alec Strum. Alec reached out to me and sent it to a bunch of agents and that’s how I got my agent.

The sense I got when I was doing the Fringe was that it was a disaster—that’s not fair, I wouldn’t want to call it a disaster, it’s just not a lot of people came to see the show. It’s a giant festival and there are many hundreds of shows in it. Certain ones get traction really early on in the festival. I assumed nothing would come from the show, but in this weird roundabout way, it did lead to all of this stuff.