The purest pleasure in watching one’s own play comes from the moments when one sees the moment one wrote being lived by the actors, who are lost in it — moments when all the arts involved in the making of theater are soaring and the play is doing what it should. — NC playwright Jim Grimsley
I’ve been reading an interview from this NC playwright in order to prepare for a workshop he’s giving at ECU in a couple of weeks. I’ve agreed to serve as the moderator for the workshop, though my own self-doubt questions whether I’m really qualified to do that. Anyway, on to my musings …
This quote struck me like a punch to the gut when I read it because of my own experiences of having Enemies produced in 2008. I distinctly remember seeing on the performance stage for the first time the final scene of the first act where a female character gets beaten, thrown around and choked to death. My jaw and my stomach dropped, I was quite literally speechless … somehow my director, Jay Alexander, had pulled the exact amount of brutality and emotion out to stop me (the guy who wrote it!) in my tracks. Not to mention the two actors “taking a full swing” (one of them probably knows where I get this quote from) and not holding back a bit …
Or the actress who created a diary for her lead character, completely on her own, which had my director and me just looking at each other in surprise and wonder. This was my play living on its own, breathing its own life, even before it made it up on stage for opening night.
Grimsley calls the process of having your own work performed “magic”. But this isn’t your nice, neat, pull-a-rabbit-out-of-the-hat, saw-a-woman-in-half magic … this is nasty, emotional, harsh, leave-you-sweating-in-the-dark magic. Magic that exposes the writer’s innermost secrets for audiences to hopefully gasp at, laugh with, cry about, not miss it as they text someone from their seat. Magic that hopefully lingers in a person’s mind and gives them those chills you get when you’re a part of something special.
So my thanks for those who gave me that magic back in February of 2008 … my director, my cast, my family, my friends, my colleagues … and yes, even my audience. Thanks for giving me that magic … I just hope I can experience it some more in the rest of my lifetime.
