It has been over a month since I updated this, but I suppose it’s necessary to finish the story. I won’t go day-by-day this time.
I spend the week after Shaw opens teaching a residency at one of my favorite elementary schools in Baltimore County and scouring the internet for reviews. I also have a third interview at Everyman Theatre for the position of Education Director, which goes well. I’m really beginning to warm to the job’s possibilities, and am excited by the way my proposals for expanding the position are received. Only two considerations give me pause: how will my residency schools and the Maryland State Arts Council react to my leaving them, and will the New York Times review change my life when it comes out?
As for the former, I haven’t received many residency requests for the 2010-2011 school year. I assume it to be the fault of the economy and look favorably at Everyman again. Just in case, I send an e-mail to my regular schools to see if any are interested in having me return. I expect nothing. But the response is overwhelming: thirteen schools request residencies. I usually only do five per year. So if Everyman doesn’t offer me the job, I still have enough work.
Now to wait for the Shaw reviews. The first comes from Theatremania and is an intelligently written rave. Clearly, the author is familiar enough with Shaw’s work to spot the parallels. If the Times writes anything close to this, I’ll be gold; but Theatremania is just an internet site and has little pull beyond the theater community itself. The second review is positive, but not glowing. Again, from an internet site, so it’s “nice,” but ultimately meaningless. Where’s the Times???
Suddenly, the reviews turn sour. A tiny internet site enjoys the actors but calls the script’s second act lackluster. It’s the first pan the script has ever received in three separate productions, but I’m not hurt. The review has no byline and the site is obscure. I get the sense that whoever the author is, he or she has chosen to write scathing things in an effort to drum up traffic to their site. But then it gets worse: Backstage, the prominent business rag for theater insiders, loves the script in one sentence, but hates the production in four paragraphs.
Again, I’m not hurt, because I am superlatively proud of the production, and no one’s opinion is going to change my own. But it is the only print review so far; and if the Times agrees with Backstage, it will spell trouble for any future career prospects I still harbor. Giving up playwriting for the Everyman job looks more inviting with every passing moment.
Being nothing but brutally honest about myself, I post the pans on Facebook along with the raves. Immediately, I get a message from Doug DeVita at Abingdon to call him at home. Doug worries that I’m upset, but I assure him I’m not. He tells me that he has heard through confidential sources that the Times loved us. I ask when the review is to be published, but Doug doesn’t know. Every new show on Broadway will be opening over the next two weeks. They take priority and, as a result, the review may never come out at all. So we wait. It still has not come out by the weekend.
I don’t go to New York that weekend because I have a reading at the Amnesty International Human Rights Arts Festival. The script, Absolute Amy, is not one of my favorites. It’s a political debate that at times gets too earnest. But I’m pleased with Catherine Aselford’s direction and grateful for the opportunity to hear the script, which plays better than I expected. Rebecca Herron is brilliant in a role I wrote specifically for her, and steals the show. Only nine people are in the audience, and that’s fine by me. One of the audience members is a Teaching Artist from a class I taught last summer. She is kind and I am glad to see a friend in the house, but I wish her first exposure to my work was a different play. I grab a bite with Becky Herron afterwards and have a blast.
I check online for Mickey McGuire’s stage manager reports about Shaw. They are mostly good: sold-out houses, much laughter. Keith Carradine apparently comes to a show. But one performance needs to be canceled because of a water main break on 36th Street. Unfortunately, this is the performance at which a commercial producer is due to attend and she cannot reschedule.
The final week of Engaging Shaw begins much like the previous one, with no review from the Times. We do, however, get two more internet reviews. One is a rave. The other praises everything but one actor, which I find tremendously unfair and thoroughly untrue. We begin to despair. Jackob (the director) and I begin to suggest that Abingdon extend the run, since the show is selling out every performance. But Kim insists that the company is merely an incubator, not a producer, and therefore never extends a run or moves a production. So Jackob and I try a different tack, to maintain our relationship both with the theater and with each other: we promote the possibility of a reading of another play of mine, Young Turg. But Abingdon expresses little or no interest in this idea. And worse, Jackob has been promoting the script without having read it. When he finally does, it’s not to his liking. We give up on Young Turg. Our hope lies in continuing the production of Shaw, which mean the Times review; but after a week and a half without publishing it, that hope has dwindled to nothing.
Naturally, just as we give up on it, it arrives: an unqualified rave, the like of which I never expected. And the effect is immediate: the last remaining seats sell within a few hours, strangers send me congratulations and fan mail through Facebook and AOL, and theaters that had rejected the script multiple times over the past decade request to read it again. When performances resume, Mickey’s reports reflect a surge in audience response. Apparently, once the Times tells New Yorkers the show is funny, they officially have permission to laugh.
Back at home, I’m getting over fifty e-mails a day, mostly from friends and fans, but a few small theaters and publishers make outright offers, and a couple of significant ones request the script. I’m overwhelmed. Betsy needs to remind me to breathe, and I develop a painful habit of unconsciously clenching my jaw, which I can’t shake. Unaware of what my best course of action is, I contact Jim Flynn, the agent to whom Warren introduced me on opening night. We have a great chat and Jim agrees to represent the script. I ask about the possibility of getting a commercial agent in to see the show and move it. He declares it to be remote. Since we only have four more shows, there isn’t time to interest anyone. Since the house is tiny and completely sold, there isn’t a seat we can give to anyone even if they were interested. Despite selling out all but one performance, despite a great review in the Times, the production will close on Sunday. Jim’s strategy is to approach the major regional theaters, which are about to complete picking their next season. We will particularly attend to those theaters where I have worked or possess a personal connection.
Then the phone rings. It’s Everyman Theatre, about which I’ve not given a thought in three days. They offer me the job. From the start they told me that working for them would mean the end of my playwriting career. That wasn’t an unwelcome prospect at the time. But I feel that my luck has changed so much over the past half week that I can’t walk away now. I turn the job down.
I head up to New York with Betsy and the boys for the final weekend. They’ve not seen this production, but they have seen the play before in all of its previous incarnations. They explore the city, while I sit in the lobby for the Saturday matinee. I have a couple of friends in the audience: Anne, a wonderfully creative woman I’ve known since elementary school, and Liz, perhaps my favorite person from the Long Wharf days and the model for a character in The Matchmaker’s Guide To Controlling The Elements. The actors are disappointed by how quiet the house is, but I suspect they’ve become spoiled since the Times review. Despite the silence, the show is well-received. In the lobby with me is a Shaw scholar, whose name I didn’t catch, but we have a warm conversation afterwards about the play and Fabian strategies for manipulating the media. While speaking to my friends, I notice Dr. Cornel West in the lobby. He wants to buy tickets for the evening show, but there are none to be had. The Shaw scholar and I follow him down to 36th Street so I can offer him my ticket for the Sunday matinee. Unfortunately, he can’t make Sunday. But he shakes my hand, thanks me, and tells me to keep fighting.
Meeting up again with my family, we have dinner at Lucille’s on 42nd Street. My younger son is a huge blues fan, and I had hoped there’d be a band playing. He’s disappointed to learn that the music doesn’t start until late. After dinner, we walk up 7th Avenue to see American Idiot, which we’re attending as a bribe for my kids in exchange for seeing Shaw. Before we turn west onto 44th Street, we notice ahead of us a car with some smoke coming out of it, surrounded by fire engines and police. “Typical New York,” we think.
American Idiot is a lot of fun, but has no depth or dramatic payoff. I love the music–particularly one of the new songs, Favorite Son–and the energy and choreography are inspiring, but I don’t care for the characters, one of whom never ventures from a couch. The boys love it and immediately repair to one of the gift shops on the way out. But as we head to the lobby, there are police everywhere, announcing that the theater, indeed all of Times Square, is closed. We later learn that the car fire we saw before the show was actually the attempted terrorist bombing. The police force us out to 8th Avenue, and I insist upon swinging by Abingdon to catch the final scene of Shaw from the lobby.
I stay for less than a minute, leaving quickly once a guaranteed laugh produces not a chuckle. It’s the worst house of the entire run, openly hostile, according to the actors. I’m worried now about the final performance on Sunday because I want my family to see the show at its best.
Sunday arrives and we have a nice breakfast at the Stage Door Deli. We attend mass at the most pathetic Catholic church I’ve ever seen. It offers only one mass on a Sunday, with no altar servers or music, and twelve parishioners in attendance. Betsy and the boys grab lunch, while I rush over to the theater to greet the members of the Bernard Shaw Society, who are bringing a group of about twenty-five people. Doug Laurie, the treasurer, hands me a copy of their journal, The Independent Shavian, in which Engaging Shaw is discussed. I sit beside John Koontz, the secretary, who has become an avid supporter of my work, even traveling down to Washington to see Irish Authors Held Hostage and Jack The Ticket Ripper at the 2009 CapFringe Festival.
My family arrives and the actors give their best performance to date. Huge laughs, much applause. Jackob is there, with gifts for everyone. There are many hugs and tears as we say goodbye, as well as a fair amount of frustration that the show wasn’t extended by Abingdon or moved by producers.
In the weeks that follow, only two of the theaters that my agent approached request to read the script. And not a single theater from the Baltimore/DC area responds. The e-mails from well-wishers, small theater companies, and even the agent evaporate. For all of the excitement of the past month, nothing has changed. Although actors and directors can find work simply because people like them, for a playwright, no matter how pleasant and easy-going you make yourself, it always comes down to two things: a good script and the whimsy of producers. I can only control the former.
I accept ten of the thirteen teaching jobs for next year, giving me no time to write anything new, then take out the garbage.
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