by Chelsea Sutton

Okay, so I did make a quiz – its embedded below but also here if you want to find out what your ideal non-wiring job is. But first…

Recently, someone confessed to me that they thought I was a full time writer. Ha.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

I’ll admit that when I was a baby writer I actually did think it would be possible to be a full time writer – maybe not easily, but it was POSSIBLE, as in, like, just keep getting better and working on your craft and put yourself out there and eventually it’ll happen.

Haha.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Obviously I’m still working on figuring this out and realizing there’s a whole part of networking and, you know, SPEAKING OUT LOUD WHAT YOU WANT that I just never learned that is wrapped up in writing careers. That has to do just a TAD with some gender politics, the school system, and the lies of the American Dream, but that’s another blog.

But recently being a writer in almost any medium seems to get harder and harder. The WGA is in the middle of a Writers’ Strike that has put a spotlight on the gigification of one of the few well-paid writing jobs out there. And the event is turning multi-union so let’s hope that what’s happening now will make writing a viable career for those in the future, but there’s no doubt the entertainment industry is shifting.

And AI threatens to fuck over not only creative writers but adjacent jobs like copywriting. In a TRULY bad faith launch during a fucking WRITERS’ STRIKE, Sudowrite launched an AI story engine that is supposed to help write a full book and it’s just a goddamn mess, especially with the ways they maybe used authors’ work for the AI learning without the writers’ knowledge. Clarkesworld magazine had to cut off their submissions earlier this year because of an influx of AI created stories that were clogging up the system. Ted Chiang wrote an article in the New Yorker about how AI functions in many ways to just make the rich richer and disenfranchise the poor, especially when it is used to try to replace workers in response to unionization (in just another example of how AI can be an amazing tool for certain things, but there are fuckers out there who want to just RUIN everything). The fiction world has been slowly crumbling as book advances are shrinking and the underpaid and over-worked editors have been leaving the publishing industry in droves since the pandemic.

Theatres across the country are also shrinking their seasons due to high costs and the slow recovery from the deep shut down days of the pandemic. We lost so many new play development organizations in the last few years, like the Lark, that it feels like…where do we even go?

I think my big dream had always been that I could make half of my income on writing – so like 20 hours of writing-related things a week and 20 hours doing something else, if we’re thinking in terms of a 40-hour work week, which, let’s be real, I have NEVER experienced since I moved to LA as a 22-year-old and worked a full time office job and waitressed on the weekends. That’s basically been my life (60+ hour weeks) except for maybe that one 9-month period where I was severely under-employed right out of grad school – because, surprise, an MFA makes people less interested in you, it seems. But don’t worry. Those other 20 hours were filled with lots of DREAD.

So I always knew I’d need to be doing something else paired with writing – whether that’s me not believing in my abilities or just knowing that my brain would get bored and would want to be building something else. You can decide.

Honestly, I’m always worried that “writing” has become my entire personality. Except for people who have seen my ghost tattoo and so then they can add “ghost stuff” to the list of my two personality traits.

But yo, we still gotta make rent. So whateva! It’s all COOOLLL, dude.

Currently, I work part time as the publicist at the Department of Theatre & New Dance at Cal Poly Pomona, part time as the Development Manager at Invertigo Dance Theatre, and part time as the Associate Artistic Director at Rogue Artists Ensemble. In addition, I write grants on a freelance basis right now for ELLA (Empowering Leadership in Latina Athletes) and have worked with many other nonprofits as opportunities come up. I’ve done a little teaching and often grade for the dance department at USC. I also pick up gigs doing writing projects or directing projects, but this is less often than I’d like.

I think it’s important to be transparent about how writers actually survive in the world. Being a full time writer is achievable, absolutely, but much of it depends on knowing folks and getting lucky, and luck is hard to come by. I feel lucky that so much of my day job work is in the performing arts world or helping nonprofits in general – especially non-profits where I make art (Rogue), and non-profits that have taught me how art and social justice can be gorgeously intertwined (Invertigo Dance Theatre).

Though I often find myself daydreaming about making a living doing something totally divorced from writing and nonprofits (because it’s hard, yo) – like, I don’t know, working at a plant and garden supply store and just taking care of the plants.

Yes, that was a real option I was considering recently. Seemed nice.

It seems that part of our job as writers is to make it seem like we don’t HAVE a DAY JOB. But this is capitalism and, I’m sorry, the money has to come from somewhere. And if people are full time writers but still aren’t getting a living wage (*cough* Writers’ Strike *cough*) then we have to get over the notion of feeling “lucky” to just be in the room and have to “put up” with an unsustainable life.

So what is YOUR day job?

If you’re like me and are always wondering what that day job should be that will perfectly balance your non-writing interests while also supporting your writing habit, I’ve put together a little quiz for you! It’s embedded below.

But really – what is your day job? (I need ideas). Ha.

Hahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaa.

(**cries**)

by Chelsea Sutton

1.

Read the rejection letter. No, really read it. Read the language. Is it a form rejection or do you think whoever rejected you really thought about each word? Did they copy and paste something an intern wrote, or did their heart break over this letter to you because you were just shy of glory, they fought for you, even, and they are seriously considering whether they can even stick around after this, the travesty of your rejection, but anyway, no, yeah, sincerely, respectfully, best wishes, see you next time.

2.

What time did the rejection letter come in? If it was an email, look at that time stamp. Is it business hours? Or did they schedule it to come late at night when they’d least expect anyone would be looking at email…but of course you were because you’re you, which means always, a little bit, hoping the next thing that’s going to change your life will be sitting in your inbox. So you were in bed or on the toilet and then it was there, staring at you, and you’d definitely look strange if you replied right then so you were forced to become one of those people who don’t react right away, who let things sit for an appropriate amount of time before responding. But do they expect a response? Would that be weird? Do you seem angry if you don’t respond but desperate if you do? Which is better?

3.

If they sent you a letter through the mail, look at the postage. When was it mailed? How long ago did they know you were being rejected and you had to wait for the news, a week or two’s delay like you’re in a Bronte novel (any of the three Brontes). Even your mail carrier knew before you, just by the thinness of the letter, and you wonder if you’ll ever be able to look him in the face again – though of course you don’t even know what he looks like and are pretty sure you have a rotating group of different carriers and you don’t have time to build a relationship with each and every one and figure out who delivered this precious object just so you could avoid them. No, you are a modern woman who is very busy. Whoever the mail carrier is, he could tell it was a rejection by feel, that there’s a single sheet of paper paired with a little return envelope with a plea for a donation. So you clutch the rejection letter to your chest and stare out the window at the storm clouds brewing and wonder if that’s a wet signature at the end of the letter, if they actually signed there name with real regrets, or if they made a stamp for the rejecting person’s signature and that poor intern, again, sat there. Stamping away.

4.

Imagine being a person who is so important, who rejects so many writers from things, that a signature stamp is made. In the early days, maybe their hand cramped from signing so many rejection letters and it shut the entire organization down because of that, so, you know, the stamp.

5.

Share a screenshot of the letter with your group chat. Obsess over how quickly or slowly people respond with condolences, offers to murder the leadership of the rejecting organization, or with positive, affirming advice about you being so close / everything happens for a reason / they seemed to really love you though. Obsess even MORE about those who don’t respond to you at all. Find one true or comforting thing someone says and hold onto those words like they are a dying star.

6.

Did you have an interview before the rejection? Start from number 1 again using your (quite perfect and unbiased) memory to analyze everything said and unsaid in that meeting.

7.

Wonder if there was a mistake. Not a THEM mistake, but a YOU mistake. Did you mess up some small technical thing like leaving your name on something that was supposed to be blind? Did you use Ariel instead of Times New Roman? You’re pretty sure your margins are one inch but maybe you should check. You read once that if your resume is too fancy in its layout, AI at companies won’t read it properly and you never get into an applicant pool to begin with. So that could be the reason. There’s an AI who couldn’t read your CV, or, let’s face it, was just jealous and trashed your application.

8.

It’s time to put it behind you. Look at your spreadsheet that tracks submissions or madly dash through your notes or confirmation emails. What should you be hearing from next? Note a date if they provided one. Make a Google calendar for yourself so you are sure to put time aside to work through this list for the next one.

9.

Let anger fuel a renewed sense of injustice. Gatekeepers are not the answer! It’s time to publish/produce/otherwise realize your work on your own! But you can’t afford it. Okay. So, obsess over your low wages at your day job. Obsess over how many hours you actually work past the number specified in your job description. Those are writing hours they are taking from you! But if you work that much, you should be rich by now right? What IS capitalism anyway?

10.

Start planning the overthrow of capitalism and the socialist revolution. No. Something better. Outside validation is fueled by white supremacy in a false scarcity system that demands perfectionism and productivity. Vow to never feel exactly how the man wants you to feel again.

11.

Read the list of the Chosen Winners/Fellows/Beloveds for this particular writing opportunity once it is announced on Twitter or whatever, and sometimes even before you get the rejection. Why did they get it over you? Obsess over their bios, follow them on Instagram, read every page of their website, try to figure out their age to compare it to everything you’ve been able to accomplish in more (probably) years than them. Wonder what you’ve even be doing with your time.

12.

What even is an artist statement anyway? Maybe you should rewrite yours. Maybe you should radically rewrite it. But what would THEY want to see? Obsess over not obsessing about what they want to see.

13.

Or maybe it’s the play/story/writing. Maybe the play/story/writing just sucks. Read the work over and over. Look for all its flaws like a pageant mom. Yell at the writing for being so imperfect, so ugly, for trying so hard.

14.

On your fifth read, fall in love with the play/story/writing all over again. Your baby deserves this opportunity and so much more. They don’t even understand what they are missing out on. Find the next opportunity. Hell, find 15 new opportunities.

15.

After you send the applications, with your new radical artist statement and proofread writing, obsess over when you’re going to hear from these opportunities. Make sure you have the time open in your calendar in case they invite you, in case you have to travel. Because you will have to. Because you are going to get this. Your play is just that good and your artist statement is FIRE now, so there’s absolutely nothing, not anything, that could go wrong.

by Chelsea Sutton

In September, I had the odd experience of seeing a play of mine produced. It was odd because I, frankly, am not used to people wanting to produce my work! It was also odd because I was not in the rehearsal room for this and had minimal interaction with the actors and director outside of a super sweet Zoom chat and a few exchanges with questions about the text. Also it was in Ohio and I’ve never been to Ohio or know anyone really in Ohio so that is odd in itself.

The play was The Graveyard Shift, which I wrote in the playwrights group at Skylight Theatre where we did a workshop of it in their LabWorks festival. That was in 2015.

I’ve always felt really good about this play. We worked hard on that workshop to make sure it worked as well as it possibly could in that truncated experience. It is a very different piece from a lot of my other work – it’s a straight up comedy that becomes completely absurd, and while it might get dark it ultimately ends in hope. I have a soft spot for it. It was a finalist for the Reva Shiner Comedy Award too! But as many of us know, comedy is not generally in demand as far as new work development goes.

So walking into MADLab in Columbus, OH, I felt I was encountering not only a new company of artists I didn’t know, who had for some reason decided they believed in this play, but also another artist I thought I knew but hadn’t necessarily chatted with in quite some time: the playwright ME of 2015.

I was terrified, to say the least. I was planning to watch all three shows that weekend, but what if I hated it? Not necessarily what the artists were doing, but what if I hated ME and the work I thought was important seven years ago? (HOW IS IT 7 YEARS??)

I was surprised that I still liked that play. I mean I had read it since 2015, I have started adapting it into a film, I FELT good about it, but its something else to see it come alive in other artists’ hands, see what people outside of your head do with what you put on the page.

Once I let go of the lonely tension in my body that came from walking into the unknown in a town where I knew no one, I learned a lot sitting in that theatre three days in a row. I had notes for my past writer self – trims, tighter jokes, moments where I could feel myself trying to PROVE I was a playwright with deep thoughts, of course. But I learned that 1) I have grown as a writer and a critic of my own work (there have been doubts), 2) I could see the shifts of comedic timing and tone over the three nights which could help me strengthen certain structures on the page, and 3) I don’t want to ever feel as if I have to PROVE I am a playwright again.

(Also I re-learned to NOT read reviews – the one review we got loved everything about the production except my writing, which I processed before seeing the second show by crying a little and then watching Hoarders on repeat.)

There was this time in my playwriting life when I felt like I had to continually prove I was a playwright, that I deserved to be in whatever room I was in (however insignificant). I felt watched and judged and there wasn’t a ton of room to not get things right (and I often didn’t get things right). I had about 7 years there when I was writing 2 new plays a year. I was trying to keep up with what felt like the industry demanded for creation, and for myself to keep growing with each play and prove over an over that I can do this.

I recently went back to the last play I wrote in my third year at the Skylight PlayLab in 2016. Again, one I had fond memories of, which felt like a play that was inching toward some “voice” that I was maybe developing then. But looking at it again, I felt this deep sickness in my stomach. More so than The Graveyard Shift, I felt like this play was trying to be ALL things: a comedy, a horror, and a “serious” play. Every page, every sentimental monologue felt like the playwright ME of 2016 saying “hey look world – do you see? See how I’m writing the shit out of this play!” I was trying so hard with it. I know people responded to it at the time when we had our reading. But when I read it now, all I see is a writer who feels like she’s maybe realizing what she wants to write, but doesn’t know how to do it in a way that feels serious enough or important enough for Theatre to care.

The year before that messy play I had created The Graveyard Shift and got it pretty close to production ready in a short period of time. But it was a comedy and folks were confused. It is the one play of mine that is unapologetically itself. But for whatever reason I felt I had to follow that up with something more serious, a play that really had to say something. And everything I had to say didn’t feel good enough.

After 2016, most of my energy went into writing immersive work, going to an MFA to work on my fiction, starting to direct again after taking a break in 2014, and learning audio and screenwriting. Plays have been hard to write over the last few years because I’m still in the mindset of proving something. Of needing every play to be all things to everyone.

So while I have notes for my 2015 ME, I feel like she had more notes to give to NOW ME. Twist!

“Remember when this was fun?” she said. “Remember how you channeled your feelings into these characters and it felt real and you fell in love with them?” she said. “Remember how by writing broken characters in the way that you are broken and then falling in love with them while you see them on stage is a kind of way of falling in love with yourself? And that maybe you haven’t felt love for yourself in a while?” she said.

Here’s the real thing I learned, though.

After the last show I saw, I got to talk a little more with the actors and director. And I heard different ways they each needed to do this play at this moment in time. This play reflected their lives and emotions and worries in ways that 2015 ME couldn’t have predicted – with thousands of miles and seven years between us. It’s not a perfect play and I will never be a perfect playwright or perhaps never even a good one – but at the very least this play right now offered a joy and a balm to the artists and maybe some of the audience too. And definitely for me. And maybe that’s enough. That’s all we’re trying to do in the end, right?

I didn’t think this is where I was going with this blog. I thought I’d just write a nice little recap of a production and talk about how Karma handed my ass to me by making me slip and fall on the condiments and crap that littered the floor by the end of the play as a kind of punishment from the stage management gods, or how I’d successfully both humiliated myself and gotten a bad review within 36 hours of being in Ohio…

But instead, I guess, I should just shut the fuck up and go write some broken characters to fall in love with.

One week ago I returned home from a six-week short fiction writing workshop in San Diego. For six whole weeks out of my life, I was basically a full time writer. Except for one or two day job things that trickled in, I mostly cut myself off from the real world, friends and family. While I’ve gone to one- or two-week workshops before, and even had a one-month residency once, I have never experienced what it is like to actually and truly have writing be the priority of my day, every day. That in fact it was expected of me to show up to the page, and it affected those around me if I didn’t.

I was in workshop for 20 hours a week, was close-reading up to 100,000 words a week of my peers’ writing, and writing a new short story a week – which would be read and talked about for a full hour not only by the 17 other writers but by the successful and highly acclaimed faculty (which changed from week to week). If I wasn’t doing any of those things, I was in craft lectures, business lectures, public readings, or one-on-ones with faculty. A friend and I also tried to find a few hours to work on our novels together.

Now, this model is not sustainable, of course, and I’m not even sure if there’s an equivalent that would work for playwriting. I realize this is a playwriting blog and not a short fiction blog…but one writer’s problems are all writer’s problems.

Because I’ve been home a week and have not written a word. My brain has be sputtering trying to understand why I need to be in meetings about fundraisers and marketing and grants and not writing a new ghost story. I’m back in a world in which no one cares if I write today or tomorrow or this week or this month. A world where I have to actively make rent. Half of me is back on my routine bullshit, the other half is asking – but…what about the writing?

What does prioritizing your writing even look like?

I wanted this blog to be a “here is a list of things I learned at my writers workshop” kind of thing but…I’ve only been home a week. And I just don’t know if I can articulate it exactly yet. Some of the lessons won’t sink in for a little while.

But I’ll tell you this.

In week two, I was basically told I was too weird in every sense of the word to really have a career. All of my arrogance and confidence was beaten out of me, and I was a bloody mess on the floor, feeling like I had wasted my life. I used that energy to write one of the stronger stories of mine at the workshop in a kind of fever dream for week 3 – refusing to stop writing for fear that I wouldn’t be able to pick it up again, that I had to see it through otherwise I’d talk myself out of even trying. I lived in that terror for the next three weeks. Worried that the things I was interested in exploring, experimenting and fucking around with were stupid and embarrassing.

If I was torn completely down in week two, then in week six I was built back up again. I wrote quite possibly the most vulnerable story I’ve ever written in a fit of rage (with myself, with the world, with how I’m perceived as a person, a woman, a woman-writer) and it was also a fusion of my fiction and playwriting life and voice. It was completely me.

And I walked away from week six not feeling like that weirdness is a weakness and an air I was putting on, but if focused well and layered with truth, it is my superpower.

So, if I had to offer a few loose words of wisdom, or just nuggets of a jumbled mind that may or may not be useful to you, this is what I’d write down:

1. If you’re scared to write something, that means you should. Sometimes that means you have to write in a fever dream, straight through to the end, to burst through the dam you’ve built between what you think your writing should be and what it wants to be.
2. Prioritizing writing looks different for everyone. But it deserves it. You deserve it.
3. Find your superpower. This is stolen wisdom from our week six teachers Gwenda Bond and Christopher Rowe but…if you’re good at language and interesting characters and structure, it’s okay for your plots to be more basic and straightforward. If plot is your thing, it’s okay for the other stuff to be straightforward. Everyone has a superpower.
4. Everything will always seem more important than the writing. Everything else is shouting for your attention, everything feels like an emergency. But be careful not to hitch yourself to other people’s emergencies. If you’re not discerning, if you default into a state of reaction, then everything else will feel like the most important thing in the world, and your writing, sorry, will never scream as loud as that email from your day job. Do I mean you should drop obligations or showing up as a sibling/parent/friend/worker/etc? Of course not. But if you’re only reacting to others, then you are helping them build what is important to them and what is important to you can get lost, can become background.
5. What I’m saying is…internalize your commitment.
6. Procrastination happens when we want to avoid negative emotions. So time management is often more about emotion management.
7. We will never be satisfied. That’s part of the job.

Anyway, that’s more words than I’ve written in a week. I’m exhausted.

This is the blessed unrest.

as completely made up by Chelsea Sutton but also like….not really made up?

agnoiaphobia n. the fear that everyone else knows how to do this but you, that there was a day in your writing education (whatever that might look like) where they laid out the fundamentals of a writing life, helped your peers define that elusive “practice” always asked about in residency apps, ran them through how to cleverly answer the question “what are you working on right now” without sounding like a rambling idiot, how to keep moving forward without feeling like you’re standing still, and no one shared this knowledge with you and are, in fact, laughing at you right now; from the Greek word ágnoia meaning ignorance.

frausphobia n. the fear that you may never write another good and/or acceptable play (short story/novel/screenplay) again because you are a damn fraud and have been coasting on luck this whole time; from the Latin word fraus meaning a delusion, a fraud.

miseratiophobia n. the fear that everyone knows you’re actually not very good but collectively decide to humor you, to throw you a bone every once in a while like the stray dog that you are, because it can’t hurt, they decide, because she tries so hard, just look at her little hands, typing away, how adorable; from the Latin word miseratio meaning pity, compassion.

telosphobia n. the fear that you don’t know what success is as a writer, or at least what it looks like for you, that you have wanted to be a writer for (however long), but the more you learn about this life, the more you run the numbers of possible (productions, publications, staffing) and all the money that comes out of it (very little) the more it all seems impossible, even very silly, to think that being a “writer” is all you can be, that being a writer is actually being a Hyphenate (writer-teacher, writer-accountant, writer-marketer), which is fine, you guess, but will you be happy if you write your little plays that no one sees as you work at the Bed Bath & Beyond (beloved by staff and customers alike) or do you really need to get that Oscar to feel worthy, you greedy writer, you?; from the Greek word telos meaning end, purpose or goal.

anyparxiasphobia n. the fear that when you get that Oscar it won’t be enough either, that nothing is really enough, that life is not long enough, and also too long, and this desire for more is simultaneously your greed and also your complete infatuation with Life and those in it, and so you hold onto everything and probably cry a little every day, and maybe that holds you back, but you also know that whatever you might feel getting an Oscar will pale in comparison to how you felt as your grandmother read the little story you wrote in crayon about the Easter bunny and smiled and scooped you some ice cream, because damnit she’s not here to hear your acceptance speech so, like, what does it even matter anyway?; from the Greek word anyparxía meaning nothingness.

kenophobia n. the fear that you won’t become who you thought you’d become in time to share that with your (parents, aunts, other important people) before they are gone, before you can say do you see – i made good choices, before you can say see – i’m okay, before you no longer have anyone watching your life from afar and its just you, making yourself happy, which is totally and utterly not possible; from the Greek prefix keno meaning empty.

anonymosphobia n. the fear that you don’t know who you’re trying to become or want to become and you might just stay the person you are right now and, frankly, you’re not sure how you feel about that; from the Greek word anónymos meaning nameless.

hamartiaphobia n. the fear that your one chance or shot was handed to you already in a moment that perhaps you can or cannot pinpoint, but that you didn’t take it or it was taken from you, and now that chance is gone forever, never to return; from the Greek word hamartia meaning to miss the mark, most often used in reference to tragedy.

vetulaphobia n. the fear that you’re already too old to do this; from the Latin word vetula meaning old woman.

nigomaephobia n. the fear that you have nothing to say, actually, and the simple act of even thinking about writing is taking up space for more worthy voices; from the Greek word pnigomai meaning choke.

penthosphobia n. the fear that this is actually what being a writer is, and now you have to deal with it; from the Greek word penthos meaning grief or lamentation, also the name of the ancient Greek God, who was late and got the cold leftovers.

By Chelsea Sutton

My turn at spewing words on this blog always seems to hit during weeks when something in my world or the world at large is radically shifting. Perhaps that’s a false correlation, but my memory insists that is correct. And it is right at least half of the time.

This past week I had my first real whirlwind of non-stop in-person theatre activity. I spent Saturday through Tuesday in close quarters with cast and creative team for filming, audio recording, and photography for the immersive postal play I’m directing, Welcome to Meadowlark Falls: The Very Merry Christmas Contest. I spent Wednesday seeing Hamilton at the Pantages after 3 reschedules over the last two years. And Thursday through Saturday rehearsing and producing a live haunt in Little Tokyo at East West Players with Rogue Artists Ensemble for a narrative app I co-wrote, Kaidan Project: Alone.

I’m coming out of that week in a reflective mode. I had bursts of wonder and wondering during that time. Wonder at our ability to create stories out of cardboard and sweat. And wondering at…why am I doing this? Am I actually, even, good at this?

To be an artist, you have to, in many ways, be a fool. You have to be foolish enough to think that you can make a living at this – or, better yet, a life. You have to be foolish enough to think that you have something to say and talent enough to pull it off. You have to be foolish enough to sweep past disappointments and head onto the next batch as if nothing could touch you.

But there has to be a limit to the foolishness. I think that is what we’ve all collectively pondered over the last year. The foolishness that makes us think that we have to break our backs and neglect our wellbeing for the notion of a dream. The foolishness that hopes the same leadership that has hurt you in the past is going to change their ways, that makes you go in circles trying the same strategies over and over expecting something new. The foolishness that makes us think we have to pay our dues for 30 years only to be met with gatekeepers that never intended for us to enter, ever.

I’m a fool. For sure.

Last December, when my blog time came around, it happened the week my grandmother died, after she and I both contracted COVID from the same person.

Just before September 11 this past year, I went to her house for the last time. I went late at night after work and traffic. I lit a purple candle and brought a picture of us in the house. The house was completely empty. My father had redone it over the last 6 months and in many ways it no longer looked like the home of my childhood. But something fresh. And new. Something the light could more easily reach.

I stayed for maybe an hour. Sitting and thinking and crying. Walking from room to room, kissing my hand and touching it to the walls. I tried to say goodbye to every inch.

I felt very foolish. Like an idiot. But I knew I had to say goodbye in this way. I knew I had to feel foolish to feel anything at all.

And if I’m really honest, once I walked in, I didn’t feel foolish anymore. I only felt like I was coming home.

My playwright brain always attaches to PLACE. How it transforms itself. How it transforms who we are. How every house is haunted in one way or another.

Returning to theatre feels like walking into that empty house. It is the same, yet not. I am mourning parts of myself while having hope for something new. I am trying to make space for what is next.

My love is like a haunted house. I don’t know how to love any other way.

I am a collector of words. I have a folder on my desktop with saved words that I stumble across. This blog has turned into a kind of meditation, so, I thought sharing some of my collection might help you, as they have helped me.

First…

…This poem by Caitlin Seida

…And then the queen Rachel Elizabeth Cargle….

….and this meditation on grief….

…And finally, the late and great Anthony Bourdain…

Be a fool.

by Chelsea Sutton

I love a good monologue. My first full length play, 99 Impossible Things, was FULL of them. Too many, in fact. Far too many. I directed and produced that play in January and February of 2011, and at the time I was working at Garry Marshall’s theatre in the Valley. He read the play, and, in a few margin notes, reminded me that while monologues are great, don’t underestimate the power of a look or a gesture or silence to express everything a half page monologue can, almost always more succinctly, and sometimes in a way that words can never reach.

I’ve tried to keep that in mind when approaching each new play; though I never write a play without that ONE monologue. I have to have ONE somewhere. Maybe it’s a bad habit.

It’s now been 10 years since 99, the first thing I directed and produced and wrote in LA. The first thing that was unequivocally mine. There was nowhere for me to hide. Even though I had amazing collaborators, designers, and actors, there was no doubt that this THING you were seeing would be blamed on me.

Let’s be clear that it wasn’t a particularly good play. It was probably too long. It probably had too many characters and storylines. The monologues, as much as I still love them, were a bit on the nose. Playwright me NOW would rip it apart.

A sea monkey was a character. And it was about a group of people processing grief. 

The critics as a whole did not enjoy this play. And I got a lot of crap for being 25 and having the gall to both write AND direct a play while being a woman. I had to process the feeling of working very hard and putting my own money and all this time into something that could be so easily dismissed. But it was an exercise in gratitude. 

People were coming and watching and having thoughts about the play, after all. Writing things about it. Spending their time on it. It’s really the most a writer ever wants. I made a lot of people cry at the end of the play. Always my goal. I did have a lot of people personally tell me how much they connected to it, enjoyed it, were touched by it.  So while I didn’t get a critic’s choice in the LA Times, I got encouragement to keep going, and a lesson in the importance of and sticky art of criticism.

One of the best notes I got was from a professional psychologist, a family friend, who told me how truthful it was, to the process, to grieving specifically, and how could I already know those things?

My answer right now is that I think most of us already know these things in our bones. Some of us are forced to confront things sooner than some. And some spend their whole lives avoiding the silence that will make them have to face, well…anything uncomfortable.

In the play, the most uncomfortable character comes in the form of a Sea Monkey, who silently haunts the character of Harold, and whose silence and final lines of the play speak volumes more than many of the monologues. A Sea Monkey who represents something that was lost, something that will never return, no matter how much you want it.

This is a piece of a monologue from the play that feels most resonant right now to me: 

“There’s this spot on the wall in my kitchen – I have this awful olive green paisley wall paper from the ‘60s that was there when I moved in – and there’s this spot where the seam is, where they ran outta paper and patched it, and the design doesn’t quite match up, the little dots and twirls just end abruptly, sorta lost to the infinite void all of a sudden. That’s how things are usually – there’s no smooth exit, no gradient shading us out. So whenever I feel like I might explode, I sit on the counter and I stare at that spot in the kitchen, and I try forget.” – Harold, 99 Impossible Things

I feel like I’m living in that weird patched up wallpaper right now. And, unlike my character Harold, I’m trying not to forget.

To make sure I don’t forget, I decided to create and produce a play again on my own. Well, a kind of play. A play through the mail. A play made up of interactive fiction, audio drama, found objects, and phone calls. A “play” of disparate voices, alone, trying to find what is lost.

I’m a little bit terrified of putting this into the world. It’s deeply personal, I’m processing things as I’m creating, and it’s a kind of thing I haven’t really created before. It doesn’t feel particularly safe. I can’t promise anything when it comes to the outcome.

But when I did 99, it was also new to me. I’d written it as a final project in college and my little theatre group and I put up our college production. That was scary, but it was a safe space. I could easily dismiss it as a thesis, as a work in progress. Producing it as a main stage show in 2011 seemed to be saying: hey all, come look, this is finished, come have thoughts.

And so, here I am again.

And yeah, there will be monologues.

Perhaps, though we need a reminder from the Great himself:

I had a reviewer friend come see 99 and wrote me an email comparing it to The Time of Your Life by Saroyan. I still have not read that play, but I offer this quote, to those who could use it. It is a cousin in sentiment to a the Mary Oliver poem “When Death Comes” by Mary Oliver, which I read at my grandmother’s funeral on December 23, 2020:

In the time of your life, live—so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches…Have no shame in being kindly and gentle but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret…In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.” ― The Time Of Your Life

I have no concluding thought for this. This monologue has already been long enough. There is, perhaps, no conclusion to draw from the moment we’re all in except to keep creating, keep living, keep doing and being the best you can.

by Chelsea Sutton

Yesterday I wrote a happy post. I warned you there’d be a sad post.

This is it.

As writers, we are trained to find patterns and story in our everyday tragedies and tribulations. We look for meaning. We look for bad guys and good guys. We look for connections, arcs, morals, lessons.

This is both a blessing and a curse.

Theatre artists will work long hours for little to no pay because we believe in what we do. Because we think we’re lucky. Because we have glorified the starving artist trope. Because we have to pay our dues, which we have interpreted to mean that we have to be okay with being treated like shit or underpaid or burnt out and so exhausted from working on other people’s visions that we have no time for our own.

There’s a whole thing going down about The Flea in New York right now, about their practices doing exactly what I described. I never worked with them, have no intimate knowledge of what happened. But this particular exchange hit me as truthful in a universal way:

I used to wonder if I should have moved to New York to be a playwright. At some point I blamed my choice for staying in Southern California as the reason I had no real playwriting career. Whatever the hell that means….I mean really. I don’t know. Do you? I used to think playwriting could be a career and now I’m not so sure.

I stayed here for many reasons. Not the least of which I was afraid, yes. But I also had a grandmother who I was very close with, already in her 80s by the time I graduated college. And a younger brother turning 7. I wanted to be a part of their lives. For her, it was the last decade of her life. I was already projecting into a future of grief, and I wanted to plan for that. I could be a granddaughter and sister across the country. But not in the way I wanted to. I figured I could still be a playwright here just as well and still be the person I wanted to be. So I stayed.

I used to wonder if I should have gone to NY to work at places like The Flea. But if I had made that choice, 13 years ago when I was leaving undergrad, I would still be here, in the middle of a pandemic, the whole industry shut down and scrambling, and sins surfacing because we no longer have anything to lose.

And I’d be alone in a little apartment in NY. Maybe with another production or two under my belt. Maybe. But just as broke and confused and wondering if I should have stayed in LA all those years ago.

And I’d be grieving my grandmother just the same.

Because she died yesterday.

It’s a long story that I don’t think anyone wants to read. But she and I both contracted COVID from her caregiver, who we had just hired to come in to my parents home, where my grandmother was now living, to help her exercise and eat and be well a few times a week. I’d met the caregiver that first day and spent a lot of time showing her around. She didn’t know she’d been exposed before coming to us.

So my grandmother and I both got sick. It has been a very long month.

Here is where the blessing of the writer species comes in. I look at the whole arc of the story, and I’m grateful I stayed close by. I was able to be close with her, help her where I could, and be next to her while she died at home yesterday afternoon. So many people do not get that small gift right now. To be able to say goodbye. To know you did something, even if it was not enough to conquer death. I’m glad I did not give up who I hoped I could be for the chance to work at The Flea.

Here’s the curse.

I’m angry. I’m angry at everyone refusing to wear masks, who take risks that are intentionally exposing others. For companies who do not, after 9 months in a pandemic, have even the minimal amount of education and systems to at least find proper protection.

I’m angry at the idea that art can only be made on a little island on the east coast. I’m angry at everyone who has exploited others, including myself for buying into it and working in that system.

In my happy post, I wrote that the pandemic has shown how racist, selfish, lazy, entitled, self-driven rather than community driven we all are. And I stand by that. And I’m angry about it.

But, my default is to look for meaning and clarity in all this, to organize it into a story I can understand. But my anger does not work like that. I am going to spin my wheels on that search for years. I will never have an answer that feels like enough.

I think every grief is different. For each person, and each loss.

We’ve been grieving the loss of theatre for 9 months. It has looked different for everyone.

I’m still figuring out what my grief looks like right now. It has been almost 28 hours.

This is going to take a long time.