A large banquet table sits center stage. It is ravishingly decorated.
The table is already filled – filled with playwrights.
Shakespeare sits next to Tony Kushner sits next to Sarah Ruhl sits next to Sophocles sits nexts to Oscar Wilde sits next to Terrence McNally sits next to Sondheim sits next to Moliere sits next to a dozen other famous playwrights all squeezed in together.
They are talking, of course -- a loud incredibly beautiful sound they make, speaking about the theatre. There’s great joy in their voices.
The Guy enters. Suddenly conversation stops.
The guy on the end – probably O’Neill – motions the Guy over.
EUGENE O’NEILL
Hi. We didn’t know you were coming.
THE GUY
I didn’t really know myself.
EUGENE O’NEILL
No matter. We can all squeeze in.
Suddenly, all the playwrights stand and scoot their chairs down one. A waiter brings another chair over.
The Guy sits down among the playwrights, artists who have inspired him and held him in awe his entire life.
The Guy smiles.
THE GUY
I know it isn’t really like this.
But it feels like this.
Today.
It feels like every word I’ve ever written down on paper
finally has come to something.
Every minute I’ve spent
in front of a blank page
filling it with words and ideas and little pieces of my life
and thinking,
“…no one’s ever going to see this
because here I am, stuck in some small town
and I will never be HERE
never
because you can call yourself a playwright all you want
but until someone wants your play
until someone wants you
you’re just someone who writes a “something-like-a-play”
not a playwright
not like these playwrights
these playwrights…”
The Guy scans the table and is overcome that he is sitting among them, even if only in this play of his own making.
THE GUY (cont.)
Today feels earned.
TONY KUSHNER
Salut!
Kushner raises his glass. The others follow suit.
THE PLAYWRIGHTS
Salut!
The Guy has a moment where he feels, for the first time, the distance between what’s wanted and what’s possible is the shortest it’s ever been.
He raises his glass. The Playwrights (and The Guy) drink. Then the conversation begins again, The Guy firmly in the thick of it.
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3 comments:
im jealous...i wanna feel like that.
"You're gonna get what you deserve" is usually a threatening phrase, used by scolding mothers or lame mafia men, but I often think this about you, and I feel like "what" is going to be pretty sweet for you.
What a wonderfully inspiring thought! Wanting something so badly and in the blink of an eye having it right in front of you...being given the world...you pause...not knowing quite what to do with it...but it becomes clear...it was always meant to be...it was when we thought it was hopeless that the answer presents itself...
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