I spent most of October spinning my wheels. I meant to
finish the first draft of Helen. I
meant to send out cover letters and resumes to Shakespeare festivals across the
country, in search of future employment. I planned to draft the press release
for Cressida. The list went on.
Instead, I read books, went to the gym, and watched more episodes of soapy
television dramas and bubbly sitcoms than I care to admit. So when the temp
agency called to offer me work on a corporate audit, I decided to take it. And
so far, going back to work has helped me get back to the work.
The work right now involves three plays: Cressida, for which rehearsals begin
today, Helen, the play I am writing,
and Feral by Bruce Hostetler, a new play that Compass Works hired me
to direct in January. Feral is a
poetic account, moving between “reality and symphony,” of a newly homeless
father’s first night on the streets. The source material for the show are
interviews with over 500 people who are, or who have lived homeless. The
stories are alternately heart breaking, terrifying, and life affirming. These
are characters who need and want work in a way that I am fortunate enough to
just barely comprehend.
The next three months will be grueling: writing, directing,
and producing while holding down this other job. Luckily the office job is a
place where I can work on things at a subconscious level, where ideas can
percolate as I focus on thousands of lines of data. The other way that the
office job is helpful is that it forces me back into relying on the public
transit system to get around. Buses and trains teach you a city in a deeper way
than driving does. You cross streets you may not otherwise. And the people. You
get to watch so many people and wonder about their various walks of life as they
come and go.
Reflecting on my month of idleness and this new month of
productivity: there are a few things I hope I will remember after the shows
close and my corporate contract is up. One is that as hard as I fight it, I do
not want to work all the time, I do need rest, and a month of idleness is not
the worst thing in the world. Second is that creative work requires a good deal
of time not being directly stared at, next time I am working from home, I have
to find my equivalent of thousands of lines of data. (Ibsen apparently spent
the first year of work on a new play, taking long walks to just think through
it’s structure. He didn’t write until the second year. Or at least, so says
Fiona Shaw in an interview on “Downstage Center.”) And third, I am someone who
needs to get out into the world, who needs the hustle and bustle of a crowd,
and the chatter of life around her.
Final thought: One of the best meditations on work is
Phillip Levine’s poem “What Work Is.”
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| The Blue Line, this past summer during idler and warmer times. |
