Mentors needed...

This is totally my fault and my psychological issues: I was never good with being mentored. For an easygoing, happy-go-lucky person, I'm suprisingly private and a bit stubborn and contrary. (Trust me, virtually no one who knows me would ever think that's true, but it is.) And because of that, I've never been one to be mentored. Blame my deeply flawed parents, their crappy divorce, you name it, but I've always had a deep distrust of authority figures. I was never one to act up, or act out (I left that to my older brother), I'm definitely a pleaser, but I'm also always ready for them to split, flake out, do all of the bad things I'm used to. So there's a distance.

But right now, I'll be honest: I could use a good mentor. Someone a bit older, a bit more experienced, but of a similar style, experience, temperment. In grad school, one of my professors always stressed how solitary the life of a playwright could be and how much you need colleagues. I think you also need mentors. This life is a lot about lessons and about advice. It's a craft, the whole theatre life, and crafts require apprenticeships and stewardships and mentors.

I'm finding myself at a bit of a crossroads, a sticking point on the path from "promising" writer to "emerging", and not sure how to navigate it. It's one of those times that you need advice from someone who really knows ya. This isn't a bleg or anything. Just...an unburdening. I'm out of the theatre lifestyle right now, working a straight job, dating someone not in the field at all, living a slightly remote area, away from the whole "demimonde". It's hard to feel connected in any meaningful way. Just sharing that...

You Can't Go Home Again

The other night, I tried to go home again. I went to an opening night at a theatre I worked at for several years, a place I basically lived, breathed and slept for the better part of a decade. For a number of reasons, both personal and professional, I’ve largely separated myself from it. Recently I’ve tried reconnecting and I’ve realized that that isn’t really possible.

A play is an ephemeral thing, and there’s something about the relationships you forge in theatre that can have the same quality. When you’re working together, it’s so all-encompassing: making the play is all that’s happening in the world. But when it’s over, you go your separate ways until you work together again. Working in a theatre can be the same experience. The turnover rate, between interns, staff members, associated artists, company members, what-have-you, is so high that every couple of years, the theatre is a whole new organization.

That’s what it felt like on Monday night. I walked into a place that had been my home and found new people there. New kinds of work, different priorities and values. This isn’t a knock on the show (though I had some concerns) but the biggest thing for me was this: it wasn’t a show that I would have ever produced. In almost every way. I’ve seen other shows at this theatre that I wasn’t involved in, but I’d never felt such a huge disconnect between the kind of work I do and the work that they’re doing.

It was a profoundly isolating experience. Even more isolating that the usual feeling of going to someone else’s cast party. I always feel out of place, drinking and partying with people who are celebrating something that I’ve had no part in. This was worse because my connection to the theatre had once been so strong. But things change.

No grand point about theatre here, just a personal observation. I’ll get back to the ranting soon…