Strictly Playwriting #8

Standards

I found peace and would zen out when I would have to do standards in school. Back then, it was a form of punishment, but now I find myself resorting to the torture from time to time when I’m stuck. The act of writing just to write usually does the trick to unstuck me.

I also find myself writing standards when I need to remind myself of something, in this case, I was compelled to crack open my playwriting journal on my bus ride home to remind myself: I am a playwright.

I wrote this shit over and over and over and over again because I didn’t know what else to write. I wrote this shit over and over and over again because I like the way it sounds, I like the way it looks, I like the way my wrist begins to ache, and the feeling of my fingers starting to cramp. I like the challenge to fill up the whole page with this phrase, I like feeling accomplished like I did something that day, I like thinking someone will one day find and read this and think I’m crazy, I like thinking no one will find or read this and no one will know I’m crazy but me. (and now you, but don’t tell nobody.)

I know this act might seem silly, my kids would call it cringe, but its how I cope with this crazy ass theatre world constantly reminding me I ain’t shit. This act of writing “I am a playwright” over and over and over again, also reminds me of the act of graffiti.

Like graffiti artists, I’m just trying to say I exist. To most people, being a playwright means your plays get produced or published, but when that shit ain’t happening, I got to constantly remind myself of who the fuck I am. So I write.

As I am writing this post, number eight in this series, I realized a theme is starting to emerge in this playwriting experiment of mine.

It appears I’m constantly battling this inner monologue.

Am I a playwright, or am I not a playwright, that is the question:

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer

rejection after rejection after rejection for little to no money,

Or to take a good paying corporate job,

And walk away from the theatre for good. To stop writing—to stop trying,

No more; and by not trying to say we end

The constant ear-ache of the thousands of voices in our heads

That playwrights are heir to: Tis a bitch

Devoutly to be wished. To not write, to not try;

To not hear those voices, those stories that need to be told—

Ay, there’s the rub:

For in that silence and solitude within a cubical

What voices and stories may come,

When we have stopped submitting to festivals and competitions,

Must we cease to exist— the thought

That our words will never be spoken by others

For what playwright actually speaks their mind aloud

Th’ director’s wrong, the actor’s sarcastic remarks,

The pangs of a dramaturge love’s, the stage manager’s delay,

The insolence of artistic departments, and the generic emails

That literary assistants send out in mass,

When they themselves are dying to be a playwright? Who,

in their right mind would work on a play for years,

But that the dread of not working on a play,

In the corporate world, under florescent lights from nine to five

Sitting in traffic day after day after day, puzzles the will,

And makes us repress our contemptment for regional theatres

Rather than producing our own work or others we know not of?

Thus hope doth make cowards of us all,

And thus the thought that one day my play will get produced,

And audiences, and critics alike, will feel something

Myself included, I too want to feel something,

With this regard keeps me writing for now

And keep the name of playwright. ¹

As always thank you for reading, wishing you nothing but the best, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.

1. This monologue adaptation from Hamlet’s soliloquy came out of no where. I’ve been working on this post for the past couple of days and thought I was going to write something different about my standards of what it means to be a playwright, talk about how difficult it is to be a playwright when your standard of living is not being raised.

But I had fun writing and working on this monologue, and I think it captures the essences of what I wanted to say or was trying to express. As I was writing, I was like this should definitely find it’s way into my play Cry Now, Laugh Later.

I also was going to stop at the line of “ay, there’s the rub”, but I was like I didn’t come this far just to come this far. Plus I challenged my self to finish the damn thing, and I ain’t mad at the first draft/pass.

I also watched like 10 versions of this monologue being performed on Youtube so I can try and get a better understanding of what the character and what these words are trying to convey. :) Let me know what you think in the comments.