January 22, 2010

Dark of the morning. Opening last night was disappointing in terms of numbers in the audience, but joyful in every other way. The actors still polish, still discover; it’s a revelation to watch them. Many of my university colleagues were in the audience, something that had not happened before. Sweet, anyway. Maybe brought on by L’s active sense of collegiality. I found a spectacular flower arrangement, sort of Zen-like and sentimental at once, awaiting me. At least three reviewers were in attendance. This is simultaneously gratifying and nervous-making, as you perch in the dark scanning their faces for signs of disgust, ennui, jubilation. As a playwright I do spend my time swiveling from stage to audience, absorbing the actors’ skills, while trying to fathom what is going on in the audience members’ heads. What I saw was concentration, what I heard was laughter, now and then, and that was most well. Seven times to see The Beautiful Johanna through with an audience will be plenty. You get exhausted looking for perfection that will never quite come, which you perhaps have not written into the platform of possibilities. You become humbled by the debt you owe people who have worked so hard and so well to realize a dream that you cannot yourself fully define. People ask “Where did this come from” and I, honestly, have no answer. I don’t know. I sat down to write, and that is what came out, in a flood, swift and, to me, necessary.

One theater volunteer approached me earnestly and said, “You have a naked woman on stage. Why no naked men?” Her companion said, “Because he wrote it and not his wife.” Oh, yes.

I wore a shirt to the theater which, I noted from the dry cleaning tag, I had not worn in 11 years. That meant something. Don’t ask what.

We cannot possibly, I’m beginning to see, make our investment back. The numbers aren’t going to be there. I care a whole lot less than I would have expected. Everything but that is bonfires and golden bells.