When Creative Teams are Split...
So recently, a new play I worked on was selected by the Humana Festival. I just did one workshop of the play, and it had been developed long before that. But, the writer and I had a sort of kinship and I love the play in a way that doesn't happen all of the time. But, the Humana folks don't know me, and I'm certainly not a known quantity in the larger theatrical world (outside of Chicago), and they picked someone far more known and prestigious than I to direct. It was a tough blow. I thought I had a chance for five minutes and really just wanted to do the play. But I had a feeling that they would need someone else, and at least I lost to a shiny, quasi-famous director and not to a peer. So it wasn't anything I could take personally. And I had only done a week on it. I wondered how I would feel if I had been there from it's conception, and really helped midwife it to this level. I know this happens sometimes.
And then I was at dinner with a good playwright friend who was agonizing over telling a director friend who had workshopped her play a few times that a theater was interested with an in-house director attached.
And I told her what I told the other playwright. It sucks but we are just happy your play is being produced. And that sounds all altruistic and stuff, but it's partially true. And we will deal with the other part. We know how hard it is to get a play to production, and the part of being a director that we must all accept is that we don't own the work. It's not ours. We don't own much, to be honest. What we own is ephemeral it is there and then gone. What a playwright owns is a lot more concrete.
And then I saw this on HowlRound today.
It's a complicated issue. And for some reason or another, will always be. The best you can do is hope that somewhere there is a producer that wants to keep you with your playwright and that play and that you can do amazing work. The favorite work of my career has been working from conception to production with a playwright. It was an honor and a creative joy that only comes along once in a while.
And then I was at dinner with a good playwright friend who was agonizing over telling a director friend who had workshopped her play a few times that a theater was interested with an in-house director attached.
And I told her what I told the other playwright. It sucks but we are just happy your play is being produced. And that sounds all altruistic and stuff, but it's partially true. And we will deal with the other part. We know how hard it is to get a play to production, and the part of being a director that we must all accept is that we don't own the work. It's not ours. We don't own much, to be honest. What we own is ephemeral it is there and then gone. What a playwright owns is a lot more concrete.
And then I saw this on HowlRound today.
It's a complicated issue. And for some reason or another, will always be. The best you can do is hope that somewhere there is a producer that wants to keep you with your playwright and that play and that you can do amazing work. The favorite work of my career has been working from conception to production with a playwright. It was an honor and a creative joy that only comes along once in a while.
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