Intermission
a creative coffee break from writing the play

I’ve been asked to participate in a play development workshop. Lovely honor. Very competive. It’s for a One-Act play I’ve written. One-Act is fancy talk for a play twenty minutes or less. When I was growing up, the One-Act play was sixty minutes. Full length plays were two hours; now they’re ninety minutes.

I am happy about this honor. I am also ambivalent about it.

The ambivalence. More and more, playwrights are relegated to two different circults we fight for space in. First, there is the development circuit. Rare is the theatre committing to a new play on the play’s merits alone. Plays are endlessly workshopped and ‘developed.’ There’s a lot of grant money in workshopping, developing and staged readings. Developing implies there’s a place for the play to go (uh, like a production, folks?). Second, there’s the short play circuit. More and more theatres are putting up limited run “festivals” of short plays. (Or, oops, festivals of new works, that consist of staged readings!)

JC, a playwright friend, says short plays are calling cards. That’s how he looks at it. He makes an effort to write many of them. Another friend, EC-not-a-playwright, once told me short plays were akin to putting a full tank of gas in the car, and then, only riding around the block. Truth be told, I often feel that way, and I no longer write short plays unless they urgently come forward.

The happy. The folks involved in this development workshop have made me feel that I am a Great Discovery. They Love My Play. They Cannot Wait to Work With Me. I feel a little like the CC Bloom character in the film Beaches. You remember? When her friend, Hillary, takes CC to the Mall? CC is uplifted because she’s recognized and asked for autographs. Yes, I’m in need of a feel good moment about myself as a playwright. It’s been a bit of drought between gigs. And I’m estatic to go for a ride around the block.

I write to understand myself, my family, my friends, the strangers around me. I write to try to understand why I respond to the world the way I do. Equally importantly, why you respond the way you do. Thus far, I have to love all my characters I am writing about; even the evil ones. Because, ultimately, no matter how much you see ‘you’ in them, they are really all a part of me. Somehow, I believe, this love keeps me connected to my compassion, my humanity, and possibly brings me just a little humility/teachability.

Why I write plays is harder to explain. For years I wrote bad poetry. There was a story I wanted to tell, and I tried it as a novel, unsuccessfully, and then condensed as a short story. Also unsuccessfully. In the course of writing prose, I realized all that “came out” on paper was in dialogue form. And it was in that moment, playwriting became my writing home.

If you look into any play, you’re gonna see the playwright, in one disguise or another. The miracle of Shakespeare is that he had so many disguises.

Arthur Miller

There is some instant gratification involved in theatre, that is extremely potent. If you are fortunate enough to have some kind of audience for your work, actors to bring it to life, you feel the power in making an audience laugh, cry, and pay attention. It’s my drug.

I write to find wholeness, to earn my keep, to entertain, and maybe even edify, in some way, myself and you.

Afllicted. Yes. Arthur Miller said something like that too.

I don’t know why Mr. Miller is quoting today. He just is.