Barbara Hall
Joan of Arcadia, the fantasy family drama that ran from 2003 to 2005, stands as a defining work in Barbara Hall's career as a creator and producer — a series she both conceived and shepherded through production across its full run.
Hall was born on July 17 in either 1960 or 1961, and received her education at James Madison University. She has worked across several distinct creative modes, functioning as a television producer, executive producer, screenwriter, novelist, and singer-songwriter. Her path toward the kind of authorial control that creating a series requires was built through roles at progressively senior levels of production, culminating in the creative responsibilities she assumed on Joan of Arcadia and the projects that followed.
Her television credits extend well beyond that single series. She created and produced the legal drama Judging Amy and later created and produced the political drama Madam Secretary. She also served as co-executive producer on Homeland. Across these productions, Hall has occupied positions that place her at the center of narrative and production decisions, working consistently within the dramatic form across projects of varied subject matter and tone.
Alongside her television work, Hall has pursued careers as a novelist and singer-songwriter — pursuits that run parallel to her screen credits rather than subsidiary to them. She holds United States citizenship. The most concrete marker of her output across all these roles remains the sustained body of television drama she has generated as a creator, the most recent prominent example being Madam Secretary, the political drama she created and produced.
Quotes by Barbara Hall
The thing I didn’t see back then is that people can be destroyed by goodness. Damage can be done by hope. If people aren’t ready for hope, it’s a cruel trick to put it on their doorstep.
I felt for the first time, maybe ever, how much harder it was to be the adults. And I wasn’t sure I could do that when it was my turn.
I wanted to smell the guitars. It’s hard to explain but they have a smell. And the best way I could ever describe it would be to say they smell like potential. Ambition and desire. If such things had a smell.
And maybe that is where rhythm comes from, I think. Our earliest understanding of rhythm. The sound of our own breath, the beating of our own hearts.
The path to our destination is not always a straight one. We go down the wrong road, we get lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn’t matter which road we embark on. Maybe what matters is that we embark.
¿Que quiere una mujer? Ella quieres ser respetada, que la escuches la entiendas, quiere flores, quiere reírse, quiere confiar en ti, no quiere leerte la mente, quiere ser valorada por quien es y en ocasiones ella solo quiere que te calles y dejes de arreglarlo todo. Joan of Arcadia
The path to our destination is not always a straight one. We go down the wrong road, we get lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn't matter which road we embark on. Maybe what matters is that we embark.
I felt for the first time, maybe ever, how much harder it was to be the adults. And I wasn't sure I could do that when it was my turn.
I wanted to smell the guitars. It's hard to explain but they have a smell. And the best way I could ever describe it would be to say they smell like potential. Ambition and desire. If such things had a smell.