The Price of Audacity
Last February, I decided to do a staged reading of a new one-act play I’d written. I didn’t really think about it. Giving it any thought would have prevented me from doing it. Sometimes it is better to jump first and measure the depth of the water later.
I’ve been in and around the theater world since I was a teenager. I was raised in a Masterpiece Theater household where it wasn’t unusual to watch James Earl Jones as King Lear on a Sunday night. Then my mother became one of the first ushers at the Pittsburgh Public Theater when it opened and I soon joined her and was privileged to see amazing theater like Judith Ivy and Sylvia Sydney in ‘Night Mother.
When I lived in New York City, I attended a wide range of shows from a workshop of Wit (with playwright Margaret Edson in the lead role) in an office building in the West Village and Chicago with Bebe Neuwirth to an all-female production of Hamlet and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom starring Whoopi Goldberg. Something about sitting in a dark space with other people and witnessing the attempt to tell a good story invigorated me. It wasn’t always magnificent, but the courage that came from trying inspired me.
It took a while, but I finally went back to get my MFA in Writing for the Screen and Stage in 2014, the year the first play I wrote, Mercy, was produced.
In retrospect, it makes sense I would eventually produce my own work. For a number of reasons. First, I prefer to choose my own collaborators - actors, directors, event coordinators. Second, although it was a kick to have Mercy accepted to a festival, there were ISSUES that were completely out of my hands. Producing it myself means I only work with people I trust. Third, I don’t respond well to politics. I had enough of that in my advertising career. And the theater world is full of politics.
When I set out to produce my play, Sister Jo in February, I had no idea what I was doing. Fortunately, it wasn’t the first time I did something blindly, and knew the key is to surround yourself with talented people who you trust implicitly. There was no one in the cast or crew I doubted had my back. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t anxious when I knew they were rehearsing, my ego in search of ways to insert myself just to “check” on things.
The production went off really well (except for the image in my mind of me running across the stage to the bathroom from all the nerves) and the talkback afterwards was enlightening. It never feels good to have people tell you they didn’t understand something you wrote. Intellectually I understood this was a new play, and there would likely be holes and questions, but when you create something, you want everyone to love it. Even with see-saw of emotion, I am very glad I did it.
Then, last December, searching for something in my Documents folder, I stumbled across the thesis I’d written for the Stage portion of my master’s degree. A full-length play called Choices that’s comprised of six interconnected one acts that range from ten to twenty-five minutes. As I read it for the first time in nine years, I found myself mumbling, “Huh. This doesn’t suck.”
I went back and tweaked some things and decided to produce a reading of the first two - Confinement and Normal. Again, I surrounded myself with people I trusted. The space was packed and the response was beyond what I’d hoped for. The conversation afterward was lively and inspiring, filled with people sharing experiences from their own lives that reflected the ones they’d witnessed on stage.
This is why I write. To have people who see or read my work find the courage to discuss how they’ve dealt with some of the same issues the characters encounter and to talk openly about what they learned and how they grew from it. It transforms the effort and struggle necessary to write it into something sacred.
So here I am doing it again. This Saturday, the second two plays from Choices - Shelter and Veneer - will receive their inaugural reading. Again, I am collaborating with people I trust. The difference is, this time I’m selling tickets.
Last time, I was able to pay the actors a small stipend with part of a grant. I believe people in the theater deserve to be paid with more than a slice of pizza. I don’t have a grant available to me this time, so I made the decision to sell tickets with all of the proceeds going to the cast and crew.
The egoic blowback from having the audacity to sell tickets to something I created was enormous. I felt sick to my stomach, wondering if I’d lost my mind. The only thing that kept me moving forward was knowing that it was my intuition that had directed me to do it. That and the support from my collaborators. They calmed me. Encouraged me. And told my ego to take a hike.
I don’t know how this is going to go down. Or how many people will show up. Or what the conversation after will be like. But that’s the risk that comes from taking an audacious step. Part of me is terrified. The other part is super excited. The truth is, it will be what it will be and exactly what all of us involved need.
Until next time,
P.S. If you’re interested in seeing the show, here is where you can get tickets.