When It Starts Getting Real*

Yesterday evening, I saw I had an email from someone I didn't know, with the title of my play as the subject. Of course, my heart started beating incredibly fast. What could this mean? Am I the next great playwright of the American stage?

Well, no, but yes. Sorta.

It was an email from the woman directing the staged reading of my excerpt in NYC. She had a question about the selection I chose. She ended the email nicely, saying she was happy to represent it and that she had a lot of ideas.

It was a simple email, a nice one. And just like that I realized that my play is in the hands of others.

I am sure this is old hat for some people, but for me it is new. In staged readings past, I was always there, a part of the process. My friends were directing it and/or in it. I was in the safe community of people I knew. And while I tried my best not to intervene and I tried to let the director and actors find their own interpretation of the work, who knows what effect my presence had.

My influence on this play, on this reading is pretty much over. The director has it. She has her actors. She has her ideas. While she knows I will be there to see it in January, and that may influence some of her decisions, at the end of the day my part is done.

This is both thrilling and terrifying, in a good way. I can't wait to go to the reading.

Fingers crossed that this won't be the first and last time someone else breathes life into my work.

(*I may or may not have been thinking of this when I wrote the title)