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| Photo: Gabrielle DiDonato |
Fifteen years ago, I received a fellowship and branded myself a playwright. I had written plays, but I had not yet told myself, given myself permission, to announce to the world that this is what, this is who I am.
Like changing my name at age eighteen, not everyone I knew immediately accepted this change. They would recommend to me plays to perform in, because they knew me as an actor, or plays to direct, because they knew me as a director. They were not interested in my plays.
Even so, I was committed to becoming a successful, professional playwright. All I had to do was to get produced. That is what I believed, I just needed to get produced. What I really needed to do was to write plays.
I made a list, way back then, of plays I wanted to write. Stories I wanted to tell. Scripts that I wanted to bring into existence, where they had not existed before. It was not a short list. I wish I still had that list, but I believe it included subjects like George Michael, Three Globes, Eliot Ness, Grandfather’s Letters. I have written all of these plays.
I had a list of hopes, dreams of plays I might some day write, and I have written those. Since 2010, I have created a catalog of work, no fewer than twenty full-length scripts (and so many more shorter plays) several of which have been produced, even published.
It’s not a career, I cannot survive on the income I receive from the work. But there are those things that are under your control, and there are those things that are not. I have younger colleagues who are unimpressed when I lament about what I describe as my few successes. Because they have always known me as a playwright, that is how they see me and how they think of me.
For that fact alone, I should count myself a success, because that is something I set out to do, to redefine myself and how I am seen in the world, and I have accomplished that.
