CHAPTER 1
AS A YOUNG, struggling playwright, you have to feel grateful when anyone wants to do your work. Which was why, when a somewhat intense guy gave me a call and said he went to theatre camp with one of my college friends and he'd read one of my plays and gee, he really felt like he had a handle on it…I said I'd meet him for coffee. His name was Will Atherton. He was a second-year grad student in a highly regarded MFA program and we had agreed to meet at one of the myriad Starbucks cafes in Union Square.
Getting through the door was a struggle, but I pressed through the thronging caffeine addicts and took a moment to wonder how all these people had so much free time in the middle of the day. I was squeezing this meeting in on my teeny temp's lunch break. I scanned the horde of turtlenecks hunched over iBooks, and realized I had no idea how to pick Will out. I must have looked lost and annoyed, because he spotted me within moments.
"You must be Liza!" a voice barked behind me. I turned to see a shortish, blondish fellow with thinning, unwashed hair and a slightly soft physique.
"Will?" I questioned. Obviously Will. Unfortunately, he had a turtleneck and a wallet-chain.
"You got it!" He laughed, though nothing was funny. He pumped my hand like he was trying to bring up oil and I tried not to decide that he'd only matriculated because his family had single-handedly endowed a third of the buildings on his campus.
"It's so great to meet you!" Will gushed. He was weirdly energetic and bent over while he was talking. "I actually found a table!" he said, as though this merited congratulations.
"So how goes it?" he asked as we sat.
"Great, and you?" I replied, thinking that I really didn't have time for small talk.
"Good, good," he cooed. "I'm really juiced that you're meeting with me."
"Oh, yeah…," I said. "So how exactly did you happen to read the play?"
"Oh, you know I make it a habit to read everything coming out of Yale."
"Oh," I said, thinking this was sort of odd as I'd left undergrad seven years ago.
"So, your work!!" Will began. "I'm really into it, really feel connected to your vision."
Admittedly, I grew up around one of America's theatrical treasures, my great aunt Fran, so I should be well-used to meaningless showbiz chatter. I went to my first Oscar ceremony when I was eight. But I'm still uncomfortable with the entertainment industry's habitual self-congratulation. I'm not old enough to have "work." According to Will, however, I was someone who "could really make a dent in the landscape of contemporary American theatre."
"So here's the dealy—" Will leaned in closer, and I drew my Frappuccino back a little. "I get to direct one mainstage per semester, use the undergrad actors (great kids!) and I wanna do nothing this winter if I can't do Georgia Allen's Window."
The play in question was my pithy portrait of neighborhood politics in the suburbs, and I must admit I smiled at the thought that it might see the lights of a stage.
"Wow," I said, "I'm really flattered—"
"You prolly wanna know, like, what I'm about: totally valid. Here's my thing—very into the Theatre of Cruelty, Artaud, Grotowski, very physically oriented." Visions of shrieking drama students in unitards writhed in my head.
Immediately I wondered why Will was drawn to my naturalistic drama, but I was trying to be open-minded. Exposure is everything. Unlike acting or dancing or wrapping the Reichstag, writing is one of the few artistic pursuits you don't need permission to do. But if my plays weren't being performed, I might as well stop writing them. I let Will continue and I tried to seem enthusiastic, but a small pebble of fear formed in my stomach as he explained that he wanted to add a character who moved through the audience poking people with a stick and telling them to sit up straight. He seemed to think it would strengthen the feeling of confinement within the play's oppressive neighborhood. I tittered uneasily.
"Thing is, Liza," he explained, tugging on his wallet-chain, "you have to be willing to take risks. You have to make people uncomfortable."
Copyright © 2007 by Ellen Shanman.
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