What Kind of Playwright ARE You?

Just had my end-of-semester meeting. The GOOD thing? My professors like what I'm writing. the BAD? They think I'm working on too many projects at once. The word "promiscuous" might have come up. Or was it "Polygamous?" It was suggested that I'd better mend my ways and learn how to stand by my man...er, plays.

I admit it. I cheat on my plays. I string them along, make out with one play while I let another buy dinner, I write love-notes to an old play when I should be sitting by the phone, waiting for the latest one to call. I wear white cotton underwear for one project, and never let on that I've got a drawer full of red lace ready for another. I'm a total hussy.

I then ran into a dear friend, who said he'd been told that his work was a little "surface-y," that his characters "lacked interiority," that his plays were a little, to use his word, "shallow."

What did I learn today? That I don't sit down to my keyboard and morph into a different, better, more focused, more patient person than I am during the rest of my waking hours. That we're the same PLAYWRIGHTS as we are PEOPLE.

Because while my dear friend isn't in the least bit shallow, he's also not someone who allows every passerby beneath his surface. You can't know him at a glance...in fact, if all you do is glance, the rewards are fun, but fleeting. But his surface, and the surface of his plays, definitely are the gloss on top of some deep, dark, depths. And if you think I can't stick to one project in my writing life, you should (or maybe shouldn't) see the rest of my life. I always think the grass is greener on the other side of the genre. The good news for world, if not for my professors, is that I manage to sleep around on the plays in my life, and stand by the people.

Does this mean that I should throw on a dress on Sundays, throw out my fancy underwear, see the error of my ways, and commit? Does this mean that my friend should invite a few more people to see his dark depths? Maybe, maybe not. But I DO think that it means that my relationship to my craft mirrors my relationship to the world, that to alter one means to alter the other. If the plays are the project, then so is the playwright.