On risk and rejection (and success!), part ten

Well, guess what, kids? There is SUCCESS written all over this post! Unbelievably (at least to me), my play, "Uncharted Territory," along w/ my friend's play, won the Arlington Players' Quadrangle Festival! As a result, both of our plays will be fully mounted in the Fall! I am beyond excited. Granted, it helped that we had friends there voting for us :-), but I also feel if our plays sucked--and word on the street is that mine doesn't (I know D.'s doesn't)--they wouldn't produce them. So my revisions this past weekend weren't for naught (not that I thought they were, but you never know), and I will get to see the revised play staged in a few months. WOW! How exciting! What's more, I indicated my hope that a new individual could play Mark, and the director agreed. Unfortunately, I don't have anyone particular in mind, but I do know the type of person I'd like to play him, and offered that.

This is all so mind-boggling, considering the lack of success I've had writing. As some have pointed out to me, it shouldn't come as such a surprise. After all, I have an MFA in Creative Writing, and this is combining two of my favorite things, writing and theatre. But considering that I haven't been engaged in playwrighting for very long, I am having good success thus far, and am very excited and motivated to keep writing and to keep submitting. Of course, I still want to act, very, very much, and will pursue opportunities (like next week's Theatre@First auditions), but I will save the majority of my energy for writing. I do have some new ideas now and hope to have time to write. Yesterday's two minute play festival was interesting, in that I got to hear so many different kinds of short plays. Some worked very well, some not so well, and some not at all--I thought my monologue, "Computer Guy," came out pretty well (and I didn't freak while I watched it! Progress!)--and I got a better idea of what to write about and what is more likely to be successful (for example, don't just END the play; it doesn't work, it isn't clever, and it's just bloody frustrating for the audience).

Meanwhile, I am so happy that I revised the ending of "Uncharted Territory" so it's a bit more ambiguous, much less hokey (and God knows, I HATE hokey), and also brings back dialogue (hence proving the "end is in the beginning" dictum really works). I am so eager to see this performed now (I hope not to cringe next time ;-)). I was just flying on sunshine during my elliptical workout (the last one, alas, til Saturday, but just b/c I'm going to Florida to visit my niece, nephew, and sister tomorrow, and I can't wait to see them and to relax in warm weather), and again, success feels a million times better than failure, or lack of success, if you will. I have always felt that I was a strong writer and that my time would come, but that, as I am slow to grasp so many things, it would be delayed. This seems to be true. It's not that my short fiction was bad, exactly, when I was studying at Emerson, but it didn't have any perspective. It was all about me (poorly and barely disguised), and though well-enough written, not especially insightful. Maybe short fiction isn't as natural a genre for me, either, but in any case, I knew how to write but couldn't find the subject matter.

Over 10 years later, I'm able to see outside of myself well enough to write about people who aren't at all like me, and I don't find it impossibly tough at all (though I like to write about myself, too ;-)). Interestingly, one of D.'s friends asked after the reading Friday night if the play was about me and my mother was as horrible as Karen's. 'God, no,' I replied. 'This isn't about me at all!' She was relieved and I was pleased that the idea might be possible, and yet I could honestly say that there was little, if any, of me in the piece. Perhaps a few of the emotions, but not many. I could understand these characters, but they were not me, and that is very freeing, I've learned. In any event, it's been a long time coming (considering that I started writing when I was six or seven, and that I took a creative writing class in college, with pretty mediocre results), and I am savoring it all. Granted, I haven't won the Pulitzer, or had my play performed by the Huntington Theatre, but this is quite all right for now. With luck, it's the start of something good, and satisfying, and if anyone tells you that external validation isn't that important, you can tell them I say otherwise.