July 29, 2018

So, saw Waiting for the Witch done by the Cary Playwrights Forum, and I must say it was by far the least bad of all the local one-act festivals I’ve attended. Often, in fact, quite good. One wonders if it was worth eight hours of driving and $150 for a hotel for the night, plus buying a ticket for which one was, somehow, not comped, but what else would one have been doing? Susan and Jon David attended, graciously, to keep me from going through it alone. Of the ten pieces (10x10) four were actually worth watching, and nowhere was the self-satisfied mediocrity that generally attends upon such things. Cary’s in the middle of the Triangle, and so is perhaps saturated by its culture. Reuben sandwich in a rowdy bar beforehand, ice cream with S & J after. As we ate ice cream on the sidewalk, my cast and director walked by. I introduced myself. What a flood of confession and inquiry! They wanted to know how they had done and if I had liked it. I exaggerated my pleasure, but in fact the actors were amiable and the production not a catastrophe in any way. The crowd laughed. I laughed. It was completely different from all the other pieces that evening, and I understood why the director complained that nobody understood it. “It’s Hansel and Gretel,” I responded disingenuously. My director launched a salvo of apology and explanation that went on so long, getting sharper and more abased, that I thought she might not be quite sane, or exhausted after concentrated effort. It assured them that it was all OK, and that any interpretation joins the Great Stream and enlarges the work. Hansel gave me his phone number. Slept badly at the Holiday Inn. Drove home, lay down in the silken summer light and slept well.

Actually spent my time figuring out why my piece was different from the rest. The general procedure seemed to be: set yourself a problem and then in ten minutes work the problem out: what if a professor is bitten by a student who is a werewolf?; what if you mistakenly think you see James Taylor in a restaurant?; what if you bring possessions of a dead friend to a pawn shop and the pawnshop guy is ALSO a friend of the deceased?  I and one other did not do that, but assumed our plays to be part of an ongoing narrative, with its origin in the past and its end in the future, and only this one passage momentarily visible. I never knew that’s what I was doing until now.