Earlier this month, a play I wrote was performed in a festival which was a two-week competition. Each night, about ten plays competed and were evaluated by two or three judges who selected one or two plays from the evening to move onto the final round, and the winners of the finals would then be published in a compilation. I had participated in this festival two times before and my plays were not selected as semi-finalists or deemed “winners” either time, but I had a strong feeling that the third time was going to be my charm. I felt thrilled and blessed to be working on a play I was so proud of with a phenomenal, insightful, brilliant director who totally “got” my play and was doing these fabulously subtle and nuanced things with it, and two extremely talented actors who could both easily be stars. To add to my giddy excitement, we were all getting this over-the-top positive feedback from people who had seen a rehearsal, and everything was falling so magically into place. As a playwright, it can be a frustrating, scary, and/or intimidating loss of control to work with others on something so close to my heart, but this entire process felt like a dream collaboration, and for me, exemplified all the best possibilities that working together to create a piece of theatre can be.
The night of our performance, I dressed up and wore eye shadow, the house was packed with friends and family, and afterwards, I went to the after-party I had planned to celebrate our accomplishment. I was told that the night’s winner would receive a call between midnight and 1:00am, so when I returned home a little after 11:00pm feeling very satisfied about my play and in the after-glow of my after-party, I busied myself arranging my flowers and checking email. A little after midnight I crawled into bed and proceeded to roll over every 5 to 7 minutes to check my cell phone for the time, and to see if I had missed any calls that had mysteriously and inexplicably gone straight to voicemail. By 12:38am I was starting to feel like that girl who is home alone on a Saturday night, lying awake, waiting for the emotionally unavailable man who she is madly in love with and who may or may not be out on a date with another woman, to call. At 1:04am I drifted off into sleep thinking that it would only be a few minutes until I would be awakened by the loud ringing of my phone...
At 3:00am I woke up and stared at the ceiling to the sinking realization that I (my play) didn’t win, but of course I took it personally and turned it into me – I lost. Again. Third time wasn’t so charming after all. All those things that I had wanted to happen, that I had anticipated happening, well, they weren’t going to happen, at least not now anyway. I thought I would finally get the recognition for my playwriting that would make things a little…easier. That one of the anonymous judges would be a literary agent who would be blown away by my talent and want to sign me on the spot, that my play (I) would win and get published which would open doors for me at theatres everywhere that would all want to produce my work. That everything would change for me because I wouldn’t have to convince anyone anymore that I was worthy of being produced, of being accepted instead of rejected, of being paid attention to. It would finally be proven.
At 3:00am I looked around my apartment in the dark and thought of all the stacks of papers I would have to organize and file, and the clothes strewn everywhere I would have to pick up, put away, and clean; of how I would now have to address all the things I had been putting off, avoiding, and neglecting while I was busy being caught up in pre-play preparations, excitement, and anticipation. The excitement was over and it was time to do my dishes. I rolled over and went back to sleep.
