The other day I hosted the first session of Demystifying the 10-min. Play with Gary Garrison, in which 12 scriptwriters (and me) get to learn the essentials of the craft of writing the 10-min play from my friend and colleague Gary, who happens to be the authority on this form. The workshop is turning out to be even more fascinating and eye-opening than I imagined and I'm confident we'll all come out the other end much better craftspeople. Remember. The word is playwright, not playwrite, for a reason. Plays are wrought. With much blood, sweat and tears along the way. That is one key to their unique alchemy.
But I digress.
What I wanted to address in this post is my annoying and sad little habit of reflexively retreating to self-denial in the face of praise.
At one point in our discussion, the subject turned to theatre on Zoom vs. theatre IRL. The question was raised by one participant: should we call it theatre? Can theatricality exist in the Zoom box.
And one lovely writer I've known for years broke in to say that she knew that great theatrical use of the Zoom medium could be achieved and she knew this to be true because just two weeks ago she had witnessed a solo play expressly written to live inside the Zoom box and it was Roland Tec's new play, A Nagging Feeling Best Not Ignored.
She was not even finished offering her warm and thoughtful praise of my work when I started mock chuckling.
WTF?!
And insightful playwright that she is, she didn't miss that little detail. God bless her for calling me out on that nervous tick in real time immediately as she interrupted her own flow to say "And you're laughing but it's true. The piece was great."
Then after thanking her as quickly as possible I reached to change the subject to take the spotlight off of me.
There were so many times during my seven year tenure as Director of Membership at the Dramatists Guild when I felt the same panicked impulse to hide, to run away from praise for fear of sucking all the oxygen out of a room. I don't know whether I was (and am) overestimating my own power to take focus but I do know this.
When we diminish or minimize our own accomplishments we not only hurt ourselves, we inadvertently communicate to those who wish to sing our praises that they are misguided, are wrong and should shut up.
After all the blood, sweat and tears it has taken us to make and produce whatever it is we've made for the world why on Earth would we then turn our back on our achievement in this way? If you recognize your own behavior in what I'm describing, do yourself and us (your fans) a favor and...
STOP IT!
Life's too short and you're too good for that tired look. Time to finally put it to bed once and for all.
