Every work of art is a message in a bottle, a hope that whatever it is you were trying to share when you created it makes its way to someone who can use it, ideally to make their lives, if only for a moment, a little bit better, clearer, nobler, happier, or more hopeful or truthful, or at the very least, more fun.
When I first started Gossamer Grudges I was quite confident I could find a home for its premiere. Doing so is never a slam-dunk, but I was far more assured than I was when I started Louis Slotin Sonata, the play for which I am most widely known, and which has had the most productions. But confidence is no guarantee. Relationships with collaborating theatres shift, theatres close down or reduce the amount of new work they produce. Recessions roll in and shrink the collective appetite for risk among the artistic directors who choose which plays get produced (a notoriously risk averse bunch in the best of days.) Gossamer Grudges went on the shelf to languish with a couple other unproduced plays of mine.
A shelf is not a home for a play, at best it’s a orphanage, a weigh station; at worst it’s a mausoleum.
I have to believe that being published like this, by a site as cool and respectable as Connotation Press, gives my beloved farce more chances for production than otherwise. And I thank Kathleen Dennehy for finding things about the play that she loves, and for sharing such kind words about it.
Good luck, Grudges! May this pretty electronic bottle find its way to finding you a proper home some day.
Comments