I recently got the exciting news that a short play of mine, Approaching the Summer Sun, is slated for publication in the first issue of Mini Plays Review: An International Journal of Short Plays. The volume will be available in print and electronically (more info to come). The theme of the first issue was to be love (whatever that is) and I couldn't think of too many pieces the required length to send. Approaching the Summer Sun began as a monologue which was rewritten as a vignette when it was folded into a longer, unpublished play, Wars and Rumors of Wars (2011).
Like the majority of my early work, the piece was written to someone in particular, the subject of one of my many "dedications." My more recent work has been written more for myself and has not necessarily been dedicated to specific people though there are many to whom I'm in debt for ideas, inspiration, and encouragement. The experience of learning the short piece was to finally be in print made me think back to the following piece, "Writing for Others," which was first included in my collection Everyone Else is Wrong (And You Know It): Criticism/Humor/Non-Fiction.
In a literary criticism course I took at Athens State University, a student made the following pithy comment, which was wrong to be sure (an over-generalization to say the least), but has stuck with me: "Women write to understand their mothers; men write to impress women." Certainly the latter applied to me throughout my work ca. 1997-2014. This resulted in little but derision from most of the dedicatees, with a couple of notable exceptions. The following personal essay was written after delivering the full manuscript to the person who inspired the play, but before I heard her response. I think it is an interesting essay that marks a time that resulted in later work coming from more of a place of imagination and play rather than a place of trying to make an impression on one person in particular. I hope you enjoy it and I hope you support Mini Plays Review as they launch what I think is an interesting project. Happy reading!
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When I recently gave a copy of my latest full-length play, Wars and Rumors of Wars, to the person to whom it was dedicated, I was terrified. I could not have given it to someone whose opinion mattered to me more. This play began as an exercise that I wrote very much for myself, but became an extended (for lack of a better term) “love letter” to someone else. Now, it was in her hands.
My plays tend toward the personal. This angry, frustrated, weird, and terrifying play would express my deepest feelings as well as my emotions, which (despite what some may tell you) is exactly what a play should be: expressing one’s feelings and emotions on the stage/page.
Oddly enough, a playwright, in general, writes less for themselves than for others. After all, a play is given to the collective mind and imagination (an audience) in a fiery explosion of sight, sound, space, and time. I can imagine a novel, a story, and a poem as all written for oneself or perhaps one other. In the end, it doesn’t matter if anyone else reads them. A poem can lay dead and dormant for centuries, never read or spoken aloud. If this happens to a play, it is death. A play, in fact, does not become a play until it is seen in a theater. Before then, it is a blueprint for a building that is not yet erected.
And yet, it can be a very fitting and bolstering experience to write a play for oneself—to write it without a care as to whether anyone else will appreciate or understand it. For example, I believe one of my strongest early plays, The Summer Bobby(ie) Lee Turner Loved Me (2006-2007), had to be written by me, for me. It was the first of my mature plays that I did not dedicate to someone else. At one point in the rewriting process, I tried affixing a dedication, but it didn't feel right.
The play was written to chronicle a moment in time, a time I would very gladly never live again, but was necessary in my development as a human. I had come off a long run of plays from 2002-2005 that were all written for one person, who was an inspiration, a good, old-fashioned muse. I dedicated those five or so plays not out of slavish devotion, but out of respect and admiration. In her singular way, she was flattered and nonplussed, felt both undeserving and edified.
But Bobby(ie) Lee was written as an attempt to understand events which led to who I am now. I wrote it for myself and, others be damned, I didn’t care if it was ever seen or heard or read. (Well, I cared, but that wasn't the point of writing it).
The next major play that followed, To Wander in the Dust, or Fire Nights, was also un-dedicated. It was also my first play to seem like mine and mine alone—someone else may have said the things I said, but I felt that no one else would’ve said it in quite the same way. This may be conceit, but it is always a major moment in a writer’s life when they begin writing their own work, instead of copying another’s.
Then, the writing stopped altogether. From 2008-2010, a dry spell overtook me. I took a post teaching, giving me my first real opportunity to put food on the table, but I couldn’t do the one thing I was put on Earth to do. 2009 saw one 10-minute play, Minding the Storm. 2010 saw a translation of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and the first readable drafts of Cry of the Native Children, an adaptation of an older play on the Pocahontas legend.
Suddenly, I was writing not mine, but other people’s plays. This time, literally. Then, from February to April of 2011, I was once again visited by a muse—only the second in my life—but one who gave me an abundance of written material. Suddenly, three rather good short pieces emerged—Stilldeath, The Sundown, and Approaching the Summer Sun. The latter two became vignettes in the four-part "spoken-word oratorio" Wars and Rumors of Wars. This person inspired in me over 150 pages of material that would not have existed without her direct influence on my life. A kind of Beatrice, the Dark Lady, a muse of fire indeed.
She was now holding Wars in her hands and, when she reads it, she will flip to the dedication page, which read “with a heart full of love and contrition.”
But, to be honest, I felt stronger in writing plays for myself. But, without this person, I would not have written a word in the early 2010s. As of the moment, we have not discussed the play. Perhaps this is best as I feel like I said everything I needed to say in the piece itself.
I can only hope the play stays with her—even if I would have been happier if it had been written only for me, only for my sanity and clarity of intention.
To date, the play has only been given to an audience only once—as a reading. It seems to effect people. For that, I am grateful. It tells me the collective mind may accept it even though, again, it was written for one person.
But, in a way, it will now be witnessed by the only audience I ever needed or wanted. Does that change anything? Not necessarily.
Art actually does not require a purpose. It is a creation in and of itself, even if dedicated.
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Post-script: The play was well-received by its intended audience, a person of great integrity and kindness for whom I will always be glad I knew,
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