This Circus Life...

Okay, so there's your life, your significant other, your friends, drinking, talking, movies, the stuff of an actual life that you lead, the real stuff that matters to you...

...And there's work, Day-job-Land, boring but time-consuming, the complicated dance of doing well enough that you don't get fired, but not caring too much that you lose focus of the salient point: you do this for the money...

...And there's the work of this life, the plays to check out, the readings to go to, parties to schmooze and connect, keeping a finger on the pulse, who works where now, who's getting produced, who's looking for what scripts, the constant hustle...

...And, eventually, there's the art stuff, the actual writing, and re-writing, constructing plots, looking for inspiriation, building your own perfect little house to live in for a while, trying to find the time to go back into the half-finished stuff and polish it off, all of the work that should really matter...

...And there's this, writing this blog, trying to make changes, trying to do more for the field, thinking about what's going on, looking at the big picture...

...And the circus music starts up, you can smell the sawdust and popcorn, and you juggle, you toss it all up in the air and keep it moving, only spending a second or two with each one before up it goes and something else is in its place. They toss you new things, set things on fire, rev up the engine on the chainsaw. You go up a ladder, across a tightrope, dive into a pool, all the while, juggling and juggling, hoping you don't drop something fragile, something that can't be brushed off and tossed back up, hoping, when it's done, you have all of your appendages. Maybe a few new scars, but nothing too bad.

Sooner or later, though, you do drop something. It's going to happen.

So, this is a long way of saying, I kinda dropped the ball there. It got a little hectic and I had to go and live my life for a bit. It's still hectic, but I missed this conversation. I'm going to try to keep up my end.

Standing at the Crossroads...

I was out the door. I really was. A few weeks back, I'd had it. I felt like my life in NYC theatre was going nowhere. I was fresh off a couple of rejections, stuck in the midst of rewrite hell on plays I've been working on forever and wasn't getting right. This isn't working, I thought. This isn't working at all. At New Year's, I had a long, frustrating and ultimately fruitless conversation with my dad, one of those conversations most artists have with their vaguely disapproving parents, the one where they oh-so-subtly advise that you give this pipe dream up. That conversation that really, really stings when it seems like nothing is panning out, when the plays aren't getting any better, when the production opportunities seem to be going to everyone you know except you, and when it's New Year's and you're realizing that you're well-past wunderkind age and should be feeling more comfortable in your work. That conversation that, underneath everything asks, "Is this really where you're meant to be?"

And add to that nearly a decade spent working in theatres as an administrator and not having health insurance or anything like a pension fund and barely even a savings bank. You're at the point where other people start getting serious raises at their careers, moving up in the world, but for you, you're in the twilight zone. Too experienced for an entry-level position as a script reader, not quite experienced enough to be an artistic director. And there just ain't that many associate artistic director positions out there. But, if you switch careers, throw in the towel, in most cases, you're starting at the bottom anyway. So...damned if you do, damned if you don't.

And I just plain felt damned.

So I was out. I'm still young(ish). I write firecracker dialogue, craft decent stories. I mainline pop culture like it was fresh china white and I'm a rock star from 1969. I like working with other writers. I even like assignments. You see how this math adds up. I've got a rented room, a temp job, and only a semi-serious significant other.

Mix it all together and what comes out on the other end? L.A.

I have some friends there, some connections. I've been once and liked it. I've even heard the decent things about the theatre scene. All in all, it ain't a bad idea.

Theatre, especially in New York City, can be such a thankless slog, an unending grudge match between you and about 500,000 of your closest frenemies. Sometimes, just throwing in the towel and saying, "New York, you win this round," seems like the only thing you can do to salvage even a shred of sanity.

But...it's still my home, the place where I feel like I can own the sidewalks (even if I don't today). It's a big change, and a huge shift. So...I drag my feet and hope, just hope that something will change here, some chance will happen, some door will open.

And I guess I'm realizing that, before I throw up my hand, I can give it all one more shot, and really not hold back. Reading around the theatre-o-sphere the last couple of days has really inspired me a bit, to get up off my ass, stop blaming the system quite so much (which isn't to say there ain't a lot of things wrong with it) and do a bit more. Make my own doors, or jump through a window or two. It's the least I can do.

Besides, it isn't like California is going to fall into the sea. Tomorrow. I hope.

Time to pick a road...

Lessons I Didn't Learn*

I've been doing some housecleaning and re-filing and I came across a file that I think most, if not all writers, have tucked away somewhere. It's my file of rejection letters, stretching back ten years. It's been buried in storage for a while, so I haven't looked in it for some time. It was an interesting experience, reading through it again. I noticed some things that I'd completely forgotten about. Like it's not rejection letters. There are two letters naming me as a finalist or a semi-finalist for awards. Not the most prestigious of things, but nice, nonetheless. And many of the other letters end with requests for more work down the line. Of course, I never followed up on most of those requests. I tucked the letters away and moved on.

I'm in a very different place now than I was when I got those letters, and I might behave differently now. But would I? And why did I behave the way I did? I chalk that up to what I like to call fungus on my shower shoes. That's what I call the quirky, self-destructive, immature things that we all do to undermine ourselves. Call it insecurity, call it neuroses. But it's part of this business.

The good side is that some of the people in those letters have re-surfaced, some never really went away. Some, of course, are long gone. But maybe I've learned a little something.

*I was part way through this post and accidentally navigated away from the page, so that draft was lost to the ether. But this one is pretty good.

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…