not falling down

I got her, Michelle, the director I wanted. My instincts were right, this time: she’s a genius. My director is AMAZING. We (where by “we” I mean “she”) talked about the play for almost an hour, during which she came up with better and more interesting character profiles and staging and motivations than I could have imagined. Her mind moves like water on hot grease. Synergy. This play has the potential to be incredible; I wanted to kick people in the teeth, and that may just be what she’s going to do.

I’m exhausted, ecstatic, emotional. Obviously I’m in a heightened state; I haven’t slept since we left the Days Inn yesterday morning, a low-contrast memory. But I’m excited too, and something in me is trembling. Doing this hurt. Last year I felt fatalistic about what was going to happen that night. This year I feel terrified, and joyful, and I ache.

I’ve written happy and sad before, but I don’t think I’ve ever managed to clearly transmit pain until now. I think The Laramie Project was the most important thing I’ve ever done. I think this was the hardest, and I think I did it right.

Twelve hours of sleep until I watch it come to life.

Having it read aloud was like being naked.

I’ve never written anything I count as drama before, and this play is dramatic. The cushion of laughter was still there, at the beginning, but it didn’t help because I knew it wasn’t achieving what it could yet. I wanted to make it hurt, which meant I had to make it feel good first. It hurt me. I can’t tell yet if it hurt anyone else.

The directors are picking out plays in the next room, and I’m still nervous, because there are one or two of them I’d love to have pick it and three of them whom I dread. I could babble on here about how I made mistakes for the cold reading and why I want whom I want, but I’m going to turn this thing off. My fingers hurt. My play is done, and it’s barely started.

It’s called “One Eye, One Tooth.”

I kind of forgot to mention this, but I’m in Virginia. SETC again, and the 24-Hour Playfest again, and I’ve just finished the third draft of my play, which is pretty close to final. I’m an hour early, which may mean that (end-of-the-world joke of your choice).

I’ve got enough caffeine in me to power a small country for a week, so I need to be doing something or I’ll be fidgeting and bothering the senior playwright who’s going over my piece right now: thus the entry. I’m as nervous as I was last year, because there’s no safety net. Doing comedy is hard, but writing tragedy is harder, and I think I wrote a tragedy. Or at least something that hurts.

Tony called me out last year for only writing comedy; he said he thought I had it in me to write deeper, darker stuff. I don’t believe my comedies have any less depth just because their tone is different, but the challenge irked me anyway. They do that. So this year I wrote something with a bite to it. It’s the play I couldn’t write fall term, and if you were around you know what that means, and if you read the play you might figure it out.

Or you might not. I have to edit now, I think. I don’t want the ending to feel tagged on, especially because it wasn’t.