My name is easy to misspell. The second “e” doesn’t effect the pronunciation, so it often gets left off. It doesn’t bother me, and is such a common mistake I usually don’t even notice. So I was surprised at a function here at PlayPenn when I woman I hardly know, someone who works for the conference, said, “Oh, they misspelled your name”
I looked down. She was right. No second “e.” I told her it happened all the time, and that I was surprised that she noticed.
She smiled. She replied, “Well, I’ve been looking at your name for months.”
There are many ways to describe what is so special about PlayPenn, a playwriting development conference I’ve been at with my play Another Girl for the last 10 days. It has been an amazing experience - incredibly hard work, challenging, thrilling, and so much fun. But the things that stick in my mind as I sit down to write this are the little details like the one mentioned above, or the way the interns fanned out with bound scripts for anyone who wanted to follow along during the readings, and the check for the whole two weeks per diem waiting for me the moment I stepped into my apartment.
In a later post I will talk about the actual work of PlayPenn, and all the extraordinary people and artists I’ve met here. As I am still smack dab in the middle of that work, I don’t feel fully ready to write about that now.
There is something else, though, that I’ve already gotten from the conference. I think it is probably as important as the actual work that is done here, and it is revealed by all that attention to detail.
PlayPenn unabashedly says that the work we do is important. That theatre is important, and we playwrights, as the engine of the new work of the theatre, are important as well.
This is not a feeling I am very familiar with.
I think I tend to speak about my playwriting almost apologetically, as this strange thing I do that I am helpless to stop. I have so internalized the criticisms of my chosen art (“Theatre has no cultural impact!” “No one wants new plays!” “You’ll never make a living!”) that I beat people to the punch. Before anyone has a chance to criticize, I mockingly say these things myself. I shrug and laugh. I quickly change the subject.
It’s going to be a little harder for me to do that after PlayPenn.
I don’t mean that I will now bestride the narrow world like a colossus (I’m a below-average bestrider). It’s about respect, about treating myself and the work I do with respect. I’m starting to think that maybe that’s a really important thing.
In fact, I can already feel the small bits of that change working their way into my system. It feels very good. It is, if I may use an incredibly degraded and overused word, very empowering.
Thanks for that, PlayPenn.
More later.
