Does it matter?

Yesterday felt as though spring had finally arrived. The sky was completely blue and the weather was gentler than it has been in a long time here in the frozen tundra of Minnesota. This winter has been brutal. If I see another snow flake, I'm not sure what I will do. Nothing good.

But yesterday, possibility came back a little.

Then, I went to rehearsal for my play. Playwrights should never go to any rehearsals where things are tech heavy. I know this, so I imagine that I'm a pretty patient playwright person. I don't really get upset during a cue-to-cue because the scene doesn't look as good as it should. I get upset because I realize how powerless I am. Hell, how powerless we all are. The director can be perfect but the stage manager can't get the cues. Or the stage manager is perfect but the director doesn't have all the details. Or the director and stage manager are perfect but the light board shorts for no apparent reason. The actors forget where their light is. . . It is amazing that we get another up at all. . .

And so I find myself reminding myself that "it doesn't matter. It's just a play." Spring is coming anyway. My wedding anniversary. Life is about more than just some play that a few people will see and their opinion isn't the core of my life. Enjoy the beauty. Relax in to the universe. A play doesn't matter.

That makes sense, right?

It actually makes me more upset. . . If you spend enough time telling yourself that everything that upsets you doesn't matter than one day you wake up and nothing matters and you're a junk food eating zombie who enjoys daytime morning talk shows and Republican talking points.

The trick, perhaps, making sure you do the things that matter in the way that you think they should be done. . . So how to justify the chaos of live theater -- where we're lucky that the light board doesn't cut out on us?

I guess I could try to learn to enjoy the chaos. . . If I didn't have an ego, if my name wasn't attached to this play, if I didn't genuinely imagine the low esteem people would hold me in if this play sucks, if that didn't matter to me, then I could enjoy the chaos.

But, even though I'd like to say that I don't care what people think of me or my work, I'd be lying. I wrote a play for people to see. How can I not care about what they think? If I didn't care, then I wouldn't write plays. . . I suppose I could get lost in process, but those people eventually come to disrespect their audience.

How do you respect your audience, care for them, entertainment them, communicate with them, but not let them ruin your own experience of what theater really is?

Argh! Tech week. I must sound like an idiot.