Finding a Balance

I've spent most of the break writing, writing and re-writing a play that just won't come. The other day, I went back through all my previous drafts and realized how far I've moved from my original idea.

Sometimes, of course, this is exactly as it should be. But in this case, I realized that the further I got from the core impulse that led me to write the play, the more the work felt like slogging, and the slower I moved. So, after two days off, I'm back playing patchwork with various drafts, trying to find a balance between whimsy and motion (a big word at school). So far, so good.

Finding a balance, especially at graduate school, can be a real challenge. I'm sure it is in any context as a playwright, especially as an emerging playwright, since so often we are put in the position of supplicant, asking established organizations (and established artists) to take us, and our work, on. It's an act of faith on their part, and we're expected (usually) to be open to changes. Fair enough. I know that's what I'm signing on for.

At graduate school, I know I'm signing on for three years working with established playwrights and teachers who have been around a lot longer than I have, have worked places I want to work, and know more than I do about the business and craft of playwriting. The challenge, here, is to balance a respect for that (and I DO respect it, and to be in graduate school you need to respect it, to some degree) with a respect for you own point of view, your own vision, and your own taste. It is far too easy to let your professors' tastes become your own, to let your professors assumptions become your own. On the one hand, in grad school, you're asking for that -- but you have to keep questioning the things they present as fact, and you have to test it against your own taste, your own experience...otherwise you'll turn into a sheep. Even if that makes you a well-pedigreed, talented sheep who writes great plays and gets recognized for them, you're still a sheep.

So here's a New Year's resolution. To remain absolutely open to the wisdom my professors, mentors, predecessors have for me -- but to accept none of it blindly. To trust them, and to trust myself.