The Play Must Go On

Goddamn it. Theatre is a collaborative art and the most egalitarian. It’s those aspects that I’m having to come to grips with.

To be specific I’m talking of the writer-director-actor triad. Together we become, like god, responsible for making and learning from creation.

I want to get lazy, throw up my hands and accuse Kaufman of dropping the ball, of failing to develop the characters. But that’s a novelist’s job, not a playwright’s. In the theatre that role is handled by a triad. A tribunal.

That committee had better be empathetic, passionate, and dedicated to learning and creating.

I think we are.

But it’s nerve-wracking, and I feel powerless. My last collaborator bailed. Left me holding, and I couldn’t complete the play without her.

So, yeah, I have some trust issues…and the collaborative aspect of theatre freaks me out.

It’s like this.

The writer splits early, and all we are left with are words, and it takes talking to figure out what they mean. It takes the interplay of sharp accepting passionate minds to come together.

Don’t bail on me.