Sometimes, I like to just sit around and daydream about potential future titles of my potential future memoir. Like, Title-titles and chapter titles. And I dreamt up a particularly brilliant option at 7 Monday morning while sitting double parked as alternate side parking (slash the bane of my existence, slash why don't I EVER bring a book, slash OR coffee...hashtag Gross) crept into effect:
"Broke, But the Gorilla Tape Had to Go."
Granted, the idea seemed rather obvious, looking in the back seat and noticing that both windows were still off the track, still had not fixed themselves, and were held up rather precariously and increasingly ineffectively by said Gorilla Tape. But, it felt right. It felt apt, as if it could be an awesome metaphor for...something, I don't know. Everything, all the things.
Maybe.
Blargh. Guys! This is a prime example of what my Writing-life looks like, rather, what it's begun to look like. Things happen to me, all sorts of ideas and creative fodder pops into my brain and I think YEAHHHHH!!!! WRITE ABOUT ITTTTTT!!!! And I don't. Largely just because I honestly--honestly!--haven't had the time.
(Sidebar: Someday, I will happily discuss with you exactly what the past 6 months have looked like. The half-marathon, the new job, the BABY-BIRTHINGthatwasnotmine, the vacation, the class with Kathleen Turner KATHLEEN TURRRRNERRR!!!!, the commercial shooting, the web-series, the ministering, sooooo many things. ...Someday.)
Sometimes, however, I think writing can just feel scary.
And with THAT, let us segue into one of the best nights of my professional life which, just to give you a hint, had nothing to do with acting. Well, my acting, anyway.
Backstory: A little over four years ago, I was sitting in an airport in Kansas City waiting for an NYC-bound flight and, as per, people-watching. If you have never been in the Kansas City International (I mean, they have GOT to be using that term loosely) Airport, it feels pretty much empty pretty much all of the time. And so, I'm sitting at my gate with only two other people, this couple.
They are the most fascinating two people I have ever seen.
They had to be somewhere in their late 50s/early 60s and they had clearly gone out of their way to uber-closely resemble Elvis and Priscilla Presley. I mean, he kinda looked like a bespectacled-version of Elvis that had just left a rodeo, but still, their hair was just so, his tan was just so, his sneer was just so, her plastic surgeried face was just so. It was odd, you know, and completely amazing.
But even stranger still was their behavior. The three of us sat at this gate by ourselves for no less than 45 minutes, and I watched them (albeit creepily, I've no doubt) having this increasingly intense conversation with each other. However, they were having this conversation entirely through their teeth, never moving, and never even looking at one another; they continually stared out the windows, scanning the tarmac.
Who the shit are these people?! I thought. They were too outrageous to not be real, too strange, too theatrical, and I knew that I had to figure them out.
I knew that I had to write about them.
Once I was home, I sat down and just started writing all stream-of-consciously just to kind of see what I could see about them. It didn't take me all that long to draft up an intense character breakdown of the pair, and it didn't take me long to have Waiting for Godot pop into my head, and it didn't take me long after that to decide that I needed to write a play.
And so, I did. And I wrote it feverishly and excitedly. The words just poured out and the story just kept growing and I thought UGGGGGGGH, yesssssssss!!!! I knew that I was creating something new and different, and weird, but it was Mine! This little nugget was completely Mine, and it felt completely amazing.
And then, I finished it.
Aaaand I hated it.
I HAAAATED it.
This doesn't GO anywhere! This dialogue doesn't sound real, nothing's really happening to these people, and I sound like I'm trying too hard. I hate it, Nope!, I hate it.
And I was devoid of ideas. So, I saved the file, upturned my coffee table with a FUCK this, I can't write a play!!, and walked away.
For four years.
Fast forward to a month and a half ago. I'm at work folding napkins all Zen-like when my sweet sweet lady friend Ashley approaches me with this genius idea.
"So. I'm gonna host a night of One Acts in August, and we want all of the pieces to be written by people who aren't known writers. Like, directors and actors who happen to write things."
A celebration of new work in the best of possible ways. My brain started to buzz.
I LOVE it! I love it.
"Right?!" It sounded so exciting. "You write, right?"
NO. ...The word just kind of ran out of me, so I, naturally, felt the need to qualify it as I tend to over-qualify all the things all the times.
Well, OK, no. I wrote a thing once, a play, but it was...terrible. I seriously feel like if you asked me to write anything else, I could absolutely do it, but just, I don't, I don't think that I'm a playwright.
And she just nodded, said "OK!" and that was that.
...Except that wasn't that, because she reapproached me five minutes later and said, "What was your play about?"
And so I instinctively told her. And it felt so foreign to talk about it. I hadn't discussed it with anyone in eons, hardly anyone in my New York-life even knew that it existed. I started to get anxious.
But all my friend said was, "Yup!" (...What?!)
Um, yeah. It's silly. Because it was silly! Because I'd already written it off as a thing that I couldn't do, an idea that could never ever work. I couldn't believe that I was even talking about it, let alone that someone sounded even pseudo-interested in it.
And my sweet friend just smiled. "Angela. Maybe you take a second look at it. At your play. I don't know." And walked away.
And so, that was that.
And that night, I begrudgingly sat down and opened the thing up for the first time in four years. It was terrifying. I was certain that I wouldn't even remember what it sounded like and, frankly, I was ok with that; I wasn't sure that I wanted to remember what it sounded like.
...It wasn't bad.
I mean, of course it needed work, but I could actually see where to fix it. And so, I did.
Within 72 hours, I'd completed an initial round of editing, received Ashley's go-ahead (WHAT?!), and gotten a director for the piece (What what WHAAAAAT?!). And then a cast (... ... ..).
And not a lick of it made any sense to me, at all.
Over the coming weeks, I edited and cut and rewrote and cleaned-up and sharpened like a madwoman. But, the more concrete my words became, the more my fears just grew and grew and grew. Because that was the thing: I'd never been responsible for what someone else had to say before. I'd always been responsible for the acting-part, the telling of the story, I'd done that a hundred thousand times, and had gotten, you know, pseudo-decent at that. But, I'd never before been responsible for the actual story, I'd never been in charge of the blueprint and, consequently, was terrified that I was building a structure that wouldn't hold up. A structure of my words and ideas, and I truthfully didn't know if those words and ideas were solid enough. Pulling this thing together was, in all honesty, the most vulnerable thing I've done in an exceedingly long time.
And it is terrifying to be vulnerable.
However, it is humiliating to be a coward. And I tend to think that Bravery is fun. And so, I forged ahead.
I met my two actors and my director on the night of the reading. THE Night Of, as in a little more than an hour before the curtain went up. I didn't know what it would sound like, I didn't know if they would get it, I didn't know if it would come off as stupid, or trite, if I was going to look like an absolute fool, I just...I just didn't know. Anything. And it was fucking scary.
With my heart racing, the four of us sat down at these rickety tables in the back of this gloriously dimly lit bar.
So.
And I took a deep swig from my Tangerine SkinnyGirl Cape Cod, because I am nothing if not the epitome of class when under pressure.
Before we jump in into this, talk to me. Do you have any questions for me? Does anything not make sense, read a little unclear? You tell me, I'm seriously open to any and everything you got. (Fuck.)
"It's really fun."
...What?
"Yeah!"
(WHAT?!) Did. Did I give you enough to work with?
"You're kidding, right?"
"You're kidding."
(No...)
"It's. Pretty clear to me."
"Yeah. And, like, colorful."
(It's colorful?!)
"Very."
(OH SHIT, REALLY?!) Oh SHIT! Really?!
And they both just sat there grinning.
"Really."
"Yeah. I'm only sorry I couldn't tease my hair more for this. I tried."
I THINK THAT YOUR HAIR LOOKS AMAZINNNNNNG!!! It did. Shit was huge and glorious.
"OOH! One thing. Southern accents?"
YES! Yes! I love it!!
And with that, they read the thing.
And I simultaneously held my breath and giddily perma-grinned throughout the entire 15 minutes.
I can't. Tell you. How ridiculous crazy and completely humbling it is to sit by and watch two people breathe life into a story of your own creation. I can't. And these guys didn't just seemingly get the story, they trusted it. Really. They made it live, and they made it live pitch-perfectly. I mean, how did that even happen?! I will never know what I did to deserve any of that.
Shit was surreal.
And it only got surrealler when they did it for real--and KILLED it--in front of a house of almost 100 people.
If you'd asked me when I'd last attended a reading of any kind with more than 30 people in the audience, I wouldn't have been able to answer you. There were three times as many people crammed into the back of this bar to hear these one acts. On purpose. On a Monday night. All in absolute support of five new, not perfectly finessed, and damn hungry voices, and these words that they'd never publicly shared before. How risky. How fucking exciting.
How sweet and generous of this sweet sweet crowd. And absolutely terrifying.
But, man, they were with us.
And man, every actor up there GAVE it. And to stand in a room chock full of both so much stupid talent and so much crazy support is the singlemost wonderfully overwhelming thing in the whole wide world. It's beautiful. It's uplifting, and inspiring.
And truthfully? It becomes impossible to feel afraid in such an environment. Because Fear can't thrive in a place where Love rules.
It just can't.
I want to figure out a way that I can take that feeling with me all the goddamn time.
I want everyone to feel what that is. And soon. And often.
I want to give everyone that was involved in that night in any and every way--from my darling Ashley, to my fellow writers, to the actors, to the directors, to every single sweet audience member, to that glorious chick Linda running the bar--the biggest hug in the universe.
And I want to scare myself more often. Run the risk of failing, and failing better, and then surprising myself with Failure's lackthereof.
And I will.
And I will write.
