Good Enough

I changed the ending to Summer People. With two performances to go. On a Friday night. About two hours before the show. It involved the director sending a frantic, formal, pleading email to our faculty and designers. It involved getting a light designer to run from teching an opera to the theater building. It involved no more than 15 minutes of actual rehearsal to get it right.

It was a stress on all of us who have been dedicated to making this production go up. It isn't how anyone, least of all me, would CHOOSE to revise.

And it made a world of difference in the story-telling. The actors felt it. The stage manager felt it. The director felt it. At least 350 audience members are now going to get an ending that comes "that much" closer to being the ending the play needs. I mean, we could have let it stand. It was good enough. But --

Is there really a "good enough?" "Good Enough" in construction leaves you with a leaky roof. In finance leaves you with a bailout and a foreclosed mortgage. In engineering leaves you with a broken bridge. I have thought I was "done" with this play at least three times now. Each time, for one reason or another, I've gone back to the well and found things, some big, some small, that can help to tell this story better. After meeting with Michael Dixon, I know there's more ahead. And yes, at this point, more of my focus is on the projects coming down the pike. But we're in this for excellence, right?

I owe a lot of people a lot of brownies.

But it was so, so worth it.