I Dreamed a New Dream

I'm reading the Joe Papp book FREE FOR ALL: JOE PAPP, THE PUBLIC AND THE GREATEST THEATRE STORY EVER TOLD. It's got all of these great stories of The Public Theatre, told in oral history. My favorite part of course is where they cover famous productions from Hair to A Chorus Line to True West and The Normal Heart. I'm not all the way through yet, but I have to say that it's a bit like hearing your parents tell stories as a kid and just imagining what it was like to be there.

And, like everything in my life, it got me thinking. What am I passionate about? Sure, I've got this brilliant brand name education, some good life experience, and a shit load of things I've written. But am I living my passion? Here comes the life crisis, I'm sure you're thinking. That seems to be the theme among friends and my boyfriend. You grow up with dreams and then some of us face reality. Some of us kind of face reality and manage to do what interests them - that's kind of like moving to Orange County from Oklahoma because you want to be in Hollywood. It's "I'm doing what I love" adjacent.

I don't want to be adjacent any more. I want to be smack in the middle. I'm a playwright who should be working towards having more plays produced. I've started in the right direction and I finished two plays at the end of last year. And I'm currently working on a third. I've got a fourth that I'm trying to figure out and an older one we might produce. I'm tired of thinking - I can only be a produced playwright one way or another. Like self-producing is a bad thing. Like it means the work is of lesser quality. Like someone else has to like it in order for it to be good. And that someone else has to be an off-Broadway or regional house.

I'm more interested in the experience of it all. I haven't had that rehearsal room experience in a while. I haven't had those crazy discussions about things I've written with a group of actors and a director. I haven't rushed home after a read-through in a while to do an all night rewrite.

It doesn't mean that I'm abandoning the idea of working in television. It just means that I'm making more room. If I'm going to be struggling, I might as well be passionate about some of the things I'm writing. Because the dream is living that life. It's not making a shitload of money. And at the same time it's not about abandoning the idea that I can write for a living and only write. It's just that I don't want to sacrifice one for the other.

Putting it out there.