Nine years ago I set off for the wilds of Alaska, my first play in hand. I went to the Last Frontier Theatre Conference and had an amazing time. Among the momentous things that happened that week was meeting the estimable Rolando Teco, great friend and collaborator, as well as being the editor of this here online journal.
The play I went with has since been buried under a large rock, but my love of the Conference soldiers on. I recently returned from a week there as a featured artist. And I’m here to tell ya, it’s still pretty great.
I think the most wonderful thing about the conference is its total lack of irony. Not that the plays in the conference lack irony, but the conference itself is unabashed in its passion for theatre. It’s like an 18 year old in love for the first time, utterly besotted. In the morning there are classes on theatre. In the afternoon there are readings of plays. At night there is a show. And then there is the Fringe, where sketches and short plays are tried out in front of a kind (and largely inebriated) audience.
That is to say that after all day in a theatre, and all night watching a show, these folks say, “What should we do now? I know- let’s read a play!”
Those of you have read some my previous posts have heard all my hand-wringing about being a playwright in a world that has largely left theatre behind. Such complaints seem ridiculous at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference, where art and artists are plentiful, as are bonfires and whales and really good Alaskan Amber and just so much damn fun.
It got me to thinking about what all the above-mentioned hand-wringing is really about. I have a theory (surprise, surprise). In a word – career. It’s the pursuit of career that poisons the well.
Put another way, I don’t wonder why I’m a playwright while I’m writing a play. It’s too consuming to allow for such distractions. And, frankly, I love it too much for those thoughts to get any traction. It’s only while I’m trying to get my play produced or at least read by the “right” people that I wonder.
There aren’t many people making a living at theatre in Alaska. Subsequently, I don’t think that many of them worry about it. Would that we could say the same thing in New York. The grab for success consumes many talented people. I have seen them fall. It ain’t pretty.
In Alaska, or at least at the Conference, it is all done from love. And that love suffuses the place, giving it a bit of a glow. Even someone as cynical as myself, desperately missing the son I was away from for the first time, got caught up in the mood almost to the point of giddiness.
So I raise my metaphorical glass to the Last Frontier Theatre Conference. It dragged my love of my art out of the musty closet at the back of my head and brought it out into the daylight. Anything that does that is doing the Lord’s work.
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