It’s a bad play after all Feb. 3, 1986

 

 

There is nothing more humiliating than showing a bad play to a great playwright – especially when you’re the one who wrote the bad play.

Fortunately, the man was kind, an old friend who I had shared writing classes with in the past, who had authored one of the three great plays in the festival – all of which had come out of those classes.

I kept thinking maybe I had pushed too far and had too little to offer. But I also knew that when I come too close to success, even moderate success, I find a way to screw it up.

The class we shared had held a lot of promise for me and I panicked, and later telling myself I had no talent for it and that I ought to give up, maybe go back to warehouse work.

Instead of seeing each failure as less acute than the last, making progress even if not yet where I want to go, I get depressed and see failure as the end all.

My play at the festival didn’t even get a laugh from the more sophisticated audience Sunday night, while sitting beside me, my old friend and the man whose play would eventually win, assured me things would be all right with a little more work.

Some in the audience predicted he would become the next O’Neill or Williams, his play laying the ground work for a career most expected to shock Broadway.

His play was balanced and full of rich characterization, such as I always saw when we were in writing class together. Dr. Chief said he was a master of voice and feeling, and last night, his play showed as much. Dr. Grant, of course, had recognized the potential and brought in professional actors to play the parts – where as I had to rely on the student actors from the theater department.

I would like to blame the actors, but it wasn’t their fault. Dr. Grant tried to comfort me claiming my play would have played better with the same level of acting.

I knew better. Mine was ripe with dishonesty. I did not reach down deep enough into my soul and drag up all the stuff that lingered there.

To become a great playwright, I need to use my whole self. But I have been reluctant to do so, too cowardly to real too much about myself even in the disguise of fiction.

The embarrassment I felt last night I deserved. Maybe it is a life lesson, a crossroads where I have to decide which direction I need to take, to settle for a mundane, uncreative life, or to take chances raising questions about my sanity or sexuality, my honesty and my ability to love or not.

It is a hard, maybe an impossible road, and in the end I might fall of my face just as I did last night anyway.

I should have bared my soul on that stage rather than hiding behind a silly fiction that nobody appreciated anyway. I should have given the audience a taste of love and lust, sorrow joy; instead I gave them junk.

 

 1986 Menu 


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