This is the twenty-first post from my NaNoWriMo Life Story Crafting project (find first post here). In the “12 Questions to Help Us Realize Our Potential,” it starts question five: “Crossing the Threshold.” How did you first test the waters? The “transformation” I chose to write about was how I came up with the Well-Being Toolbox.
Photo by Jack Moreh from Freerange Stock
The conversation with Sheila was uncomfortable. She was put out that I hadn’t insisted upon her directing as a condition of producing the script.
“You told me to go non-Equity,” I said.
“I know.”
“I did.”
She explained that Actors’ Equity was a union for actors and stage managers, but she could still direct a non-Equity production.
“I already said yes,” I said.
“That’s okay. It was an honest mistake. Just call them back.”
She had a point. Had I known she could direct the production, I would have suggested her. But I wouldn’t have made it a deal breaker. Having closed the deal, I found I was stubborn about not re-litigating the matter. She teased me for not showing some spine. Somewhere in my brain that triggered a replay of my dad laughing at me for not cheating my brother out of his Batmobile. That surprised me. I’d never noticed having any more integrity than the next guy, but maybe I was exercising a different muscle: autonomy?
I told Sheila that I was grateful for all the work she had done. I would be happy to work with her again. But that hadn’t been part of the deal I’d struck. I had made my deal. It might have been a crappy deal, but then, I didn’t have an agent yet. If she wanted to negotiate a separate deal to replace Rolf Forsberg as director, she could let Linnea know I’d be on board with that decision.
“Really?” she said, as in “You’re really going to make me do that?”
“If we’re going to keep working together, you should know I’m an asshole.”
She laughed. “Okay, asshole.”
When Sheila called me back the next day, I half expected Players Workshop had rescinded the offer.
“Linnea wasn’t super excited,” she said, “but I was able to convince her that it was the best thing for Players Workshop, the ensemble, and the production.”
Sheila had worked with improv talent in her industrial shows and films before. Based on that experience, she renegotiated the rehearsal hours to give the cast the experience they’d gain from an Equity production. She added the sweetener that she auditioned actors all the time for her business, and that kind of work was a shortcut to various union cards. She also convinced the company to extend the run, both to give the actors a chance to grow into their roles and to add value to the play in other markets. I may not have had an agent yet, but I had a badass.
Russ had planned to direct Escalators, but as the date approached, he got too busy at his day job. The two options were to reschedule or to have Greg step in as director.
The downside to rescheduling was that I had begun my marketing campaign as soon as the date was set. Our Wieboldt’s typesetter added the details to the poster, which hung in my cubicle. I passed out flyers for co-workers who had been to the Northlight reading. I’d printed programs and called the two attendees who had moved on to other jobs.
The downside to having Greg step in was uncertainty. I felt that Russ got me and I didn’t get Greg. Greg, the current president of Chicago Dramatists had been around since the organization’s early days and knew a ton of actors. I’d seen a couple of shows he’d directed, and while the scripts hadn’t been great, the actors had given their all.
But unlike Russ, Greg was also a resident playwright. I’d only seen one reading of Greg’s play, a naturalistic piece that centered on a couple of guys restoring a vintage GTO while venting about their dead-end jobs and sharing locker room talk about the women in their lives. They muse in extended monologues about how their lives will change when they finish the restoration, but we know they’ll never finish. Russ commented that it reminded him of the Angry Young Man movement in post-War Britain.
I drew a blank when it came to offering helpful feedback, partially because I wasn’t familiar with the Angry Young Man plays, but mainly because of how Greg received it. He took each comment as an opportunity to expound on some subtle thing the audience member or resident playwright had overlooked while watching the play. As a copywriter, I lived and breathed feedback. If an ad’s message wasn’t clear to the reader, kiss your $8,000 ad spend goodbye.
Over beers afterward, I learned that this was the fifth reading for Greg’s script. He was trying to keep it fresh while holding out for a production that could put a real car on stage.
As afternoon turned to evening, Greg drank more than the rest of us. And the more he drank, the more willing he was to share the facts of theater life.
“I’ve made money acting in shows but never a red cent writing one. You know why? The deck is stacked against the playwright. See, even in a simple little two-hander, that’s twice as many jobs for actors as it is for playwrights. But it gets worse. Then there’s Second City. They don’t even use a script. Then there’s Shakespeare. Actors only have to compete with other actors, but we have to compete with every playwright who ever lived. EVERY FUCKIN’ PLAYWRIGHT!”
We laughed. There was a performative quality to Greg’s rant. He knew how to build one with comic exaggeration. And I couldn’t argue with his math. But it was easy to laugh with him about this because his experience had been the opposite of mine. I was already making money as a writer. I had already received a production of my college play without even submitting a script, and my next production was in the pipeline.
My gut sense was that Greg was all about holding court. I was all about getting Escalators in front of an audience. He could take all the credit he wanted for his casting and directorial choices. Plus, Russ said he could still attend the reading, so I’d get the benefit of his feedback. I chose to keep the date and change directors.
I went home Friday night confident that between Sheila and her husband, at least six firm yeses from co-workers, and several playwrights who rarely came but said they’d make a point of attending, I’d have at least twice the audience of a typical Saturday reading. Perhaps more.
Greg called at 8:06 p.m. I didn’t like the tone of his voice. He said that he was a little stumped and a little humbled. What with one thing and another, he hadn’t been able to field a cast for tomorrow’s reading. The actors he knew were all tied up with auditions. He said that he felt terrible, that this hadn’t happened before, but he didn’t see any choice but to reschedule.
I thanked him for trying, but some questions nagged at me. If he didn’t know until now that he couldn’t field a cast, when had he started? How many calls had he made? A less generous interpretation: had he made a first call? What were the chances this would have happened with Russ?
I bit my tongue and asked a different question. “How do we let the audience know?”
“What audience?”
“I invited a bunch of people.”
“Oh,” he said, surprised. “I can drive down and put a note on the door that the performance is canceled.”
“All right,” I said.
“Again, I’m really sorry.”
“Yeah. What can you do? Thanks.”
When I hung up, I thought of what it would be like to drive to Wrigleyville, go around a bunch of blocks trying to find a parking space, maybe paying for parking, walking up to see your co-workers’ play and reading a sign saying the show had been canceled. It was hard for me to imagine because it had never happened to me. I’d seen plays where they announced that the role of so and so would be played by…but I’d never gone to a theater and faced such a sign.
I didn’t have the home phone numbers of everyone who might come, and I didn’t expect people to be home on a Friday night, but I started damage control by calling the women’s accessories copywriter Diane.
“Oh, no,” she said, with a level of disappointment I hadn’t expected.
“Oh, yeah,” I said.
“I was really looking forward to this.”
Diane had been at Laurie’s Independence Day party, at the lunch where she bumped into the cute guy, and was the first to listen to “Jungle Work” on my Walkman when I brought it in the next day. She went on those lunchtime excursions to help select the odd set decorations. She suggested a few of the yes ands…
I spent the next twenty minutes walking her through an abbreviated version of the stages of grief. My grieving process had been anger (mild), acceptance, depression. Diane’s started with depression and took a surprise reversal to bargaining.
“Can’t you just ask for volunteers? I mean, I’ll be happy to read a part. You can read a part.”
She had a point. There were only four roles. Someone was going to have to read the stage directions because we wouldn’t have a set. That was five people. We had two. Russ would be there. Sheila would be there.
That left one part.
I realized the essential difference between why my experience in the theater had been so much different than Greg’s. He’d summed it up in two words: “What audience?” My answer, of course, was, “THE audience.” It wasn’t for the playwright or the actors or the tech people that the show must go on.
“Well?” said Diane.
“Let’s put on a show,” I said.
I called Greg up to overrule the cancellation by the Chicago Dramatists president and replace my second director in two weeks. Maybe the fact I’d written a play about the blunt force of regime change hadn’t been a complete coincidence.
