playwright life

By Tiffany Antone

I’ve been spinning. Are you spinning? What even IS this world right now? I find myself doing a lot of listening. Books that have been bringing me insight, gifting me language which which to make sense of things: On Tyranny, On Freedom, Jesus and John Wayne.

I guess I’m trying to figure out what artists are supposed to do in fascist times? Timothy Snyder says it’s vital to build/cultivate community. Artists are good at this. He also tells us we must not obey in advance. Artists are rebels, so that feels like another check.

But artists are also targets.

Tyrants know we are dangerous – it’s why they always go after us first. Maybe we need to lean into our dangerousness? Do you feel dangerous?

I’m writing… writing… It’s taken me all week to write just this post because what I am writing is fractured, fuzzy… I don’t have answers. I can’t make sense of things. I’m leaning hard into absurdism, post-modernism… I know that I don’t want to write fluff. What truths can I embody? What are the metaphors for this moment? Does any of it matter? Does my art matter?

I have no answers.

Theatre as a business is too much an egregore to respond to this moment with teeth. It will be up to the individual artists and scrappy theatres to challenge our new norms, to speak truth to power, to keep ourselves honest. Theatre companies have bottom lines to worry about, and that means they will lean heavy into what they think they can sell, but anyone will eyeballs can see the truth isn’t selling right now.

Be a witness to history. Be present in your history. Be an active participant in your history.

We hover in liminal space. What happens after Jan 20 is big business right now – read all the papers and pick out your favorites. Glue them on the wall. Throw darts at the scariest words. Breathe deeply in the liminality knowing that soon air will be spiky, things will turn sharp, our new reality will close in with force.

Write your plays. Your words are power. Even if they don’t get performed, our future history needs these plays

It drives my mother crazy that I did not inherit her optimism. When a rough spot appears on the horizon, she will confidently declare that “Everything happens for a reason,” and I’ll reply, “Or maybe we ascribe meaning to things in order to avoid the terrifying reality that the universe is a chaotic force outside our control or comprehension.”

She ascribes this to cynicism. I call it being pragmatic. I’m not, after all, some kind of Eyore, unable to smile and forever seeing doom and gloom wherever I look. I just can’t pretend NOT to see the infinite myriad fractures in our unpredictable existence. In fact, seeing the world this way helps me feel prepared for the rough spots—I’ve got a pocket full of “Just in case” with me at all times. (And yes, some people might call this generalize anxiety disorder, but whatever.)

The point is, when you’re a perennial pragmatist, good news feels… weird. It might even try to plant a seed of hope within your fortified heart, setting off a chain reaction that leads you to some very weird places.

That’s what happened to me last month when I found out I was a finalist for one of those “Big Deal!” awards we playwrights like to chase. I got excited! I felt hopeful! And then that hope completely disrupted my carefully balanced system.

I mean, yes, hope lifts your spirits and allows you to imagine adventure and glow and warm fuzzy feelings of the extraordinary sort! But hope also allows brings a heightened awareness of how precarious and fragile having hope actually is. To know that hope can be shattered? Leaving you right where you were, but now blisteringly aware of your own life’s newly unmet potential? YIKES!

I began to worry that I would not handle the (likely) disappointment very well. That I would sink into one of my “Who the f*** am I to think I have anything worth saying to the world?” slumps, and bum everyone out around me, and just generally be, like, really really sad, for a good long while. So then I asked, “Is this good news really just bad news in disguise? Is it actually better to have hope for a few weeks, than to not have had any at all?” Hope is a four letter word, after all…

So, yeah, I was a lot of fun, lol.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure the lack of an “Even better news!” email means that I’ve NOT gotten “The Big Thing” I was so tickled to be an actual contender for. And I’m… ok? I mean, I know I’ll be sad when the official TBNT email arrives, but the existential panic of “HOPE SO SCARY!” is gone. Which is a relief, because I was pretty sure I was going to be CRUSHED.

The whole experience just reminds me that getting close to a Big Deal Opportunity can be exciting and fun in and of itself. Who knows if I’ll ever be the playwright theatres are lining up to produce… at least I know someone is kicking my work up the ladder, right?

Spoken like a true pragmatist.

By Tiffany Antone