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Although Samantha Cooper didn’t appreciate the cruel remarks the long-bearded heckler who accosted her on a corner of New York City’s East Village was flinging her way, the writer looks back on that moment as being part of the inspiration for her play, Invincible Ones.

“Lines started to come to me,” the Western Washington University graduate says of the aftereffects of the harassment. “I wasn’t sure what form the play would take at first, but I could feel the pace and the energy right away.”

In a successful Indiegogo campaign designed to bring her Columbia University MFA thesis to the stage, Cooper described the play about roller derby culture and a group of 20-something friends who are reeling from their best friend’s death as being “an exploration of the inherent violence and guilt of being a girl in today’s society.”