The other day I was having lunch with an old friend and the subject of my latest play came up. I explained that after more than a decade of writing within the confines of what’s commonly considered “produce-able” I’d allowed myself the luxury of writing a sprawling epic play about Teddy Kennedy, requiring a cast of at least eleven actors and told in 55 scenes spanning a period of six years. Make no mistake, this is a big ambitious play. And I’m thrilled to have written it. And grateful to Resonance Ensemble, and Eric Parness, for commissioning it. (They will not, however, be producing it, perhaps, in part, due to the aforementioned scale of the thing.)
But I digress. The point of this post is that after having described my sprawling ambitious new play to my friend, she asked a rather straightforward question: "What do you hope happens with it? Where do you see it?"
My response to her question was striking in its flaccid lack of ambition. “Well… I don’t know. I guess I’d love it if someone wanted to workshop it. Get it up on its feet so I could really work on it.”
She pressed on. “Yes. But after that… Where do you imagine it being staged?”
“Oh. I don’t know… I guess it would be lovely if one of the big regionals wanted to pick it up.”
My answer could not have been more vague and lackluster. Here I had just spent the past several months researching and pouring my heart and soul into this play, really falling in love with my subject matter, so much so that my bedside table still sports a book on the subject. And yet, somehow as ambitious as I was able to be in its creation, I could muster only vague milquetoast responses to the question of where I’d like to see this play done.
Of course my friend pointed this out to me and added that until we know where we hope something might land, it’s silly to expect a landing at all. It brings to mind a favorite quote of my father’s, which if you Google “Dr. Leon Tec,” often comes up:
A sailor without a destination, cannot hope for a favorable wind.
I’m starting to wonder if the years of writing small plays in the hopes that their smallness might make them more attractive to cash-strapped non-profit theatres, may have had a debilitating impact on my own ability to dream big. For the truth of it is, the play I’ve just written is a Broadway play. Big in scope, themes, dramatic tension, cast size, set requirements, etc. etc. And yet I have somehow rendered myself completely incapable of articulating that, when asked a direct question.
What is that about? Why have writers become our own worst detractors? Why are we all so afraid to embrace a vaulting ambition? Can you imagine Arthur Miller answering that question in my namby-pamby way? I can’t.
What has happened to us? And how can we reclaim the drive and passion that first got us into this business?
