We Play Ourselves (book)

Pengo's 2021 Summer Book Club

There are far too many plays about plays, and I should know. I have written a few. Plays about plays satisfy playmakers and play-attenders. Movies about plays are usually weird. See Birdman or Cradle Will Rock.

There are also TV shows about plays. Okay, there's only one TV show about plays.

But then there are novels about plays. And those, as long as they do not include William Shakespeare as a character, can be transcendent. I believe it is because while theater is about showing, and not telling, just showing stories about plays in plays or other visual mediums doesn't succeed at taking theater further than it already goes.

Writing about, telling it, telling how it happens, how it feels, is the only true way to describe it to someone who doesn't know. When it's put on the page, the totally bizarre art form that is live theater performance becomes explicable, if no less odd.

I'm thinking of Station Eleven or The Cabinet of Edgar Allen Poe or even Interview With the Vampire. Earlier this year playwright Jen Silverman published the novel We Play Ourselves, about the after-shock of a certain Off-Broadway opening night. I tore through it in less than a week.

What Silverman describes so perfectly is all the ugly parts about being an artist. The creative process can be messy, especially in theater which is by necessity collaborative. You have a drive to create, but also need to compromise, and then there is the deep, dark part of you that wants your work to be accepted.

I have never read a better description of receiving a devastating review for your new play than when the author writes, “You keep thinking you should be fine, because there was a moment very recently in which you had been fine, so why aren’t you still?“

This is also how you could describe a broken heart.

Last night, having finished the novel just before bed, I dreamed I was running a marathon. This is not in and of itself unusual, because that is a thing I do. But this was no ordinary race. The route led me up mountains and across giant misshapen stone sculptures. It should have been a difficult trek, but I was doing very well, fleet of foot and remarkably agile.

I was also, I was informed, in the lead! In a marathon? Amazing! There was, however, a blonde man following close behind me, and so it was no longer enough to run. I had to maintain my lead.

Then there was a place where the stone beneath my feet broke through and I fell, maybe fifteen or twenty feet, straight down. I feared I might break a leg, or damage the bones in my feet. But I landed soft, cushioned by the springy bending of my amazing knees. I was okay! But I had been overtaken by the blonde runner.

When I got out from under this giant stone mountain, I found myself in a middle school library, one that was very crowded. I didn’t know which was to turn or how to get out. It was clear the blonde man had made it through, but I could not. There was a conveyor belt for books, but I could not fit onto them. I could not make my way through the library. I was increasingly distressed as I ran through stacks and time passed and I was stuck in this labyrinthine building.

Eventually, a fun size candy bar appeared in my pocket and it read “Congratulations!” on the label but it wasn’t for me. Rather, it was an announcement that the blonde man had crossed the finish line, and I felt defeated.

At first, I had just been running. And I loved the race, the hills, the obstacles. I was unafraid and feeling good, just running. But once I heard I was in the lead, winning became important. I lost the joy of doing what I loved, and so I lost everything. 

“Choose your art,” a director warns the playwright protagonist of We Play Ourselves. “Practice your art, always, always choose your art over and above anything else.” Approval, acceptance, acclaim, success, riches, love. These can be happy side-effects of doing the work, whatever work that is. But they can never take the place in your heart for the work itelf.