Respite

My acceptance in the PlayGround Writers Pool arrived yesterday from Jim Kleinmann. Yes!! I’d been checking my email all last weekend and this week, even the spam folder. Not that I was all THAT much invested in being accepted.
So now it means for the next six months, I’ll be checking my spam folder, etc. on the second or third Friday for more signs of acceptance. Acceptance of those new plays. Because the Monday night readings at Berkeley Rep are fantastic! The actors Annie Stuart gets involved and the directors really get the writer in touch with the possibility that those voices we hear inside our head, actually might be able to make it out into the world. I know it make me sound like a bag lady, but as Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner have so entertainingly demonstrated, those crazy voices — given the chance — can speak truth. And with PlayGround, writers get those chances.
Also, the other writers are great people to know. Playwrights, as a rule, generally have interesting things to say, and think about how even fairly pedestrian, uninteresting things can be said in a way that … captivates, enchants, catharticizes. So in the months when the other playwrights in the Pool aren’t sizing you up, taking your inadequate measure as a writer, wondering why the hell YOUR trite little exercise was picked over theirs, they can really great friends to have.
My elation at being included in the Pool again was tempered by the fact that a friend of mine who applied – a much better writer than I – wasn’t included. So there it was – before the season even started – the double-edged characteristic of involvement with PlayGround. The waiting for decisions to be announced, then reading of entrails to try to figure out on what basis decisions were made, and what the implications are for you and your friends. As long as you don’t get hung up on trying to figure out what might have been, and stick with what is, it’s can be a fun ride!
Last year I was shut out. Not one of my plays was selected. Oh the humiliation! But, in reality, only one of them should have been. Of course, I’m still resentful about that one, but like the theatre world in general, there’s no certainty about what’s going to fly, and what’s going to end up in a drawer somewhere. Charles Mee, when I was complaining to him about rejection, told me he has a drawer full of rejection letters. Clearly, it hasn’t stopped him from getting his work in front of audiences. It’s an iron-clad rule that, for playwrights, rejection is part of the process, but yesterday — for me and 35 others — there was a small respite from that particular law of theatre.
I’ll let you know how it goes for me this year.