It Gets Better

This year (so far) I've submitted to probably about 10 or more play development workshops for next summer.

I have applied to two teaching jobs that would give me the opportunity to develop my work while teaching.

I have been working my ass off on two different play rewrites over the past year.  And it's hard to do these rewrites on my own.  I could really use actors and a theatre space at my disposal.  That's why these teaching opportunities seem so appealing to me.  And why I want to do some development this summer at these theatre festivals.  The work can only get better and be helped with more hands (and eyes and ears).

I look forward to the opportunity to be in residence at a University and to really get the chance to see the vision of my work come to fruition in a full and complete way.  Then I feel like I would be ready to bring in a director to see what I've started working on.  I have no interest in directing my own work.  But I have no problem directing my own workshops.  For me, it's an extension of the writing process and it is still "writing" to me.  But there does come a point when I need actors to voice these characters and embody them.  And I need a director to help me see the things I don't see.  Blind spots.  I want a director to have a vision of my play, but I want it to be a vision that involves me.  Not a vision that is simply a showcase for his or her own abilities to shine through and outshine my work.

I need a playground.  And ideally, I would be working on several different plays in development over the summer at these various summer festivals.  It's not me being greedy, but it's me trying to give the plays what they need.  Attention.  Love.  Nurturing.

Then to parlay that into teaching in the Fall…I would love that.

And to even go further…being asked to host workshops or to work with private clients on their own material in the Winter and Spring, which would lead into a Summer of Productive Play Making and Developing and then into the Fall and an entire school year of teaching and play making.  I don't think that's too much to ask.  And I think that writers should have that sort of attention put on them.

Like I said in a previous post, I want the keys to the theatre.  And I want you to leave me alone.  And I want you to come and check on me and be in the audience for that first reading.  And I want you to tell me what you saw and not what you wish I had done.

I have a lot of plays in me right now.  And I want to systematically and with great care get them out.  And I want to see them in front of me.  And I want to talk about them.  And I want to let these children be nurtured.

That's the only way they can be the great plays I know they are.