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Last month, Barry Drogin (whom I don't know) responded with thoughtfulness and provocation to my essay "Outrageous Fortune," based on TDF's new book about the life and times of the new play in American theatres.
His thoughtfulness is evident in how he lays out how cultural changes have prodded the theatre arts to make their art in collaborative ways in order to continue having a voice in the social and aesthetic chorus. Gone, according to Mr. Drogin, is the old model of individual artist submitting work to an individual producer to get an individual production. (And I can hear "good riddance" in his tone.)
Now, here is the provoking part:
...I am amazed that you, this late in the game, would still seek that brass ring of "legitimate theater" validation. So, the point is not so much to self-produce, as to collaborate with others, to form a company in which the hat of "playwright" is not so explicitly defined. If you give up that dream and that ego, you may get more chances to play in the theatre, and see your plays become reality.
Here, Mr. Drogin, I must admit to being mastered by ambition. I do want that "'legitimate theater' validation," that "brass ring" (of all sizes, from the O'Neill to the Pulitzer). I want my name on the title page of the script, I want an ego satisfied by recognition and accomplishment. I admit to having these foibles, and I admit to failing to move myself spiritually (because it is, in part, a spiritual matter) to a place where I accept the insufficiency of egotism and grandeur and participate in life as porously and unboundaried as possible.
Why do I want all this? And my only answer is "Why not?" I am aware of all the arguments about how acidic ambition can undermine the joys of a life lived in the present-tense, a life underlined by a gentle resignation that things will be what they will be and we should grab the momentary (momentous?) pleasures that the moment offers. And part of me longs for such a release from the slings and arrows of push and shove and grasp and struggle -- it is the closest thing to redemption for the non-religious that our culture offers, this exemption from striving and its resultant strife.
And yet.
Another part of me hears this counsel of acceptance as weak-willed, as insufficient dedication to the desire to achieve, to make a mark on the world, to leave behind something more than just a gentle impress. Yes, I can hear the despotic potential in those words, but I also hear purpose and focus and a goal that gives shape and weight to my life. Not necessarily a pleasant shape or a comfortable weight -- after all, we are talking here about slings and arrows -- but authentic and desired nonetheless.
Ego and pride — I can hear the Greek chorus getting itself up to speed.
But Mr. Drogin is also right that it is "late in the game," which calls for a balancing measure of self-deprecation, not only to keep the hubris at bay but also to blunt the sting of the failures and open up the possibilities of other forms of producing art that don't depend upon either the kindness of strangers or the snake-eating-its-tail grind of self-producing. I have been getting better at laughing at my pretensions -- another if smaller act of redemption and leavening.
So the road forks, Mr. Drogin, yet again — thanks for the signpost.
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