Why I'm a failure.

My first job out of college was at Syracuse Stage as an apprentice electrician. A theatrical electrician requires a bit less skill than a household electrician. Basically, I played with lights. I hung them from the ceiling ("grid"), pointed them at the actors ("focused"), and during shows I ran the light board ("light board").

I did not fit in well. This was less because I considered myself an actor and playwright, not a technician (I had got along in the tech world before, and would do so again), than because I didn't really like most of the people at this particular theater. It was the first Large Regional Theater I ever worked at, and it was also the year that the National Endowment for the Arts was under attack. The theater had budgeted in anticipation of an NEA grant that never materialized. So Money was on everyone's mind, not Art.

I took the job because I felt that I needed to a) make money and b) make contacts. I succeeded reasonably well on a), at least for someone used to salaries from theaters in central Maine. As for contacts, well... I was a beginning playwright trying to make contacts at a Big Regional Theater that was an island, basically... there was no theatrical "world" outside Syracuse Stage, and no like-minded peers that I could find. I didn't know, at the time, that I would have been better served going to a city and plunging into the fringe theater scene, building a reputation, and staging my own productions. Instead, I sucked up to half-rate professors at Syracuse U. and the occasional playwright who had a show on our main stage.

I took two people to lunch: one was Vittorio Rossi, who was a Canadian playwright whose play The Last Adam was on in January. It was, basically, an Arthur Miller show. At least we had something to talk about (I'm a huge Miller fan) but he didn't write the kind of plays that I wanted to. We had a good lunch and conversation. I gave him a copy of my full-length play I had written in college and never heard from him again.

Here I was doing exactly what I was supposed to do... getting in people's faces, picking their brains, then showing my stuff. And it was getting nowhere.

The second person was the director of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, a sentimental, tuneless musical based on Robert Fulghum's writings that the audience inexplicably loved. Again, lunch was great, and again he was happy to read my work--"Give it to me at opening, when I'll have time to relax." So, I did. And you could tell by the look on his face that it was just a brush-off, that he had hoped I forgot. I never heard from him, either.

I learned several lessons from that year. First, don't bother sharing your best work with people in power, because they will ignore you even if you write Hamlet. Second, don't try to do tech and be creative at the same time (unless you're a designer). People look at you and see a techie--only a techie. Third, contacts do no good if the people you've contacted are immediately going to another city while you have to stick around to run their show.

Aw, who am I kidding? There's only one lesson I took away from that year: I have no talent so I may as well give up. Sad, but true. So, the answer to the boldfaced question above: Why am I a failure? Me. I made the choice to go to Syracuse. I inferred the lessons learned there. And I sat on my hands for the next four years, getting more and more bitter about theater, and I'm the one who hunt-and-pecks to write this blog instead of a play, or novel, or screenplay.

What I should have done? Gone to a city. Before Syracuse, K and I were living near Boston--that would have done nicely. Maybe then I could have accumulated what I'm only starting to get now--a group of peers who respect me and appreciate what I'm good at, and who I could see commandeering a corner of the park to put on a show or grabbing a videocamera and making a film. Now I've got that, but it's too late. My creativity has been squeezed out of me, and I'm another failed playwright, like the rest of 'em.