Playhouse Tuesdays 2.0: New Beginnings

by erica wachs, prose reader

Quote of the week:

“For if my name is given through routine

And not because it represents my view

Then soon I’ll have no name, and nameless I

Have not myself.”

– King Charles III

Hi everyone!

Welcome back.

You thought we were done with this segment. You thought you’d stop getting annoying little Facebook notifications urging you to care about playwriting (or, more specifically, my musings about playwriting).

But alas.

You were wrong.

Right now, I’m typing against my deadline (which I’ve known about for weeks), sweating in my dorm room as my oscillating fan brushes the side of my legs and then goes to cool down my pillow. Recruiting a cappella groups are singing mommymadememashmyM&Ms at lightning speed before they perform; it’s all very nostalgic and poetic, and will probably be used in a future scene some day.

First: some housekeeping. I get it—reading playwriting analysis is pretty boring to a reader. I originally wanted my posts to be like “here’s an element you should care about!” but instead they became mini-analytical essays, and that’s no fun. Instead, for a little while, I’m going to be presenting some research on specific playwrights, update you as to my writing, and talk about the themes and topics young playwrights are tackling today.

It’s funny—my blog-writing hiatus was not due to the fact that I wasn’t reading or writing anything (which I was and did), nor was it because I had nothing to say about the works I was writing and reading. Rather, it’s because I was doing all of these things at a pace where I wouldn’t be able to process and fully articulate some of the incredible shows I’ve had the privilege to read and see over the past year. I could write a whole blog post about what it was like to see Peerless, a play by Jihae Park that premiered at the Yale Rep last November, and how it was a brilliant modern adaptation of Macbeth, and how I stood in the theater until the ushers kicked me out because I was just tracing the set with my eyes, wanting to absorb every last moment of the show. I could tell you about the time I stayed glued to the couch of the Samuel French bookshop in Los Angeles (where I was working this summer; more on that later) blazing through Sarah Ruhl plays (which unfortunately, sounds cliché). I could, I could, I could… and it would feel so empty, fake, not-monumental-enough-for-a-first-post-back.

For now, in true back-to-school spirit, I’ll tell you about my summer, where, amidst an internship, I enrolled in a playwriting class at UCLA. Every Tuesday night from 7-10 pm, eight Los Angeles residents quite literally gathered together to discuss contemporary plays, as well as read original 10-minute plays. On our first day, our introductions were to consist of our names, an issue we felt passionately about, and something we were grateful for. As the rest introductions were made—there was a guy who wanted to write about his relationship with his mother; a girl who felt passionately about mental health, after her own battles; a girl whose native language wasn’t English, but who was excited to try the craft—I was awestruck. Within an hour of knowing these people, the power of playwriting, or even thinking about playwriting, prompted them to share with seven relative strangers their deepest confessions, vulnerabilities, dreams. Over the course of the six-week class, I wrote a 54-page one-act about Gertrude Stein visiting my family for a Passover Seder, a passion I penned during lunch breaks and off days. During the read-through of the first scene I handed in, my class identified that something wasn’t affecting them the way it should; they were able to point out what exactly I should be focusing my dialogue on. Ultimately, it was that class’s environment that allowed me to plumb my relationship with my Judaism, something I’ve always wanted to write about, but never felt safe enough to do.

That class was sometimes very silly. Other times, I was completely transported to the world of Edward Albee, Lisa Kron. My point is that for three hours on Tuesday nights (ironically enough!), despite the fact that we were all leading insane lives outside of the classroom, eight people who otherwise would not have known each other gathered together to read plays about love, loss, the stigma against STDs, blazing asteroids, and talking horses named June.

And so, as we all go off to start another semester or year of school, I would like to encourage all of you who read to take the time in your life to do something for a few minutes each day or week that is completely unrelated to your typical routine. For those six weeks, playwriting was not only a constant, but a refuge, a way to take stock and recharge for the week ahead, an excuse to see live theater.

The barrage of a cappella has subsided; I found a welcome back post. I hope everyone has a great first month back to school, and I’ll see you in October.

Until then,

Erica

#ericawachs #playhousetuesdays