Modesty Doesn't Live Here Anymore

The group interview went well. The reporter asked good questions and was easy to talk to. Maybe he was too easy to talk to; I was surprised by some of the other playwrights' responses. I tried not to take it all too seriously. It was awfully nice of this reporter to make us all feel important and special by paying attention to us and recording our dialogue to tape, but when all's said and done, our opinions mean jack. The plays speak for themselves. We need an audience for our work now. We don't need to assign motivations to our actions over the 6 month period it took to write the play.

I'm walking a fine line here. These ladies are awesome and they've done a tremendous job with their plays. However, I think we may have (collectively) lost sight of the playwrights' role. At this point, it's about the actors. It's about the directors. And it's about pushing off from the shore to see if we sink.

That said, listening to the other responses I kept thinking of the most perfect, most mind-blowing thing to say into the tape recorder, but once it was turned towards me I froze up and kept repeating myself. Of course it's easier now, after the fact, to organize my thoughts into a logical pattern. Hell, I almost sound like I know what I'm talking about.

We also, as a group, had a tendency to contradict the question. When asked if it was true our plays were predominantly optimistic -- the group shook their heads and laughed. Then we'd proceed to explain just how depressing a night of our plays was going to be. Now I'm no marketing expert, but that's not the way to win a crowd. Besides, it's not fair to our plays to dismiss them like that. The emotions are all mixed up. Seven plays, seven playwrights, seven different views of comedy and tragedy. We sold ourselves short. No one'll leave the theatre wanting to blow their brains out, far from it. I just hope that came through in the end.

Ultimately it was a positive experience. I'm glad of this opportunity to work with these women and produce this wriggly, slippery thing. I'm inordinately proud and terrified, and I hope you can share in my twitch-i-tude starting February 11. Cuz that's the day it's due to leave the kiln.