Nine Stories should find me
The last few months I have been thinking about ways I could market my short play Eyes on the Flag. It’s a cathartic piece about my own sexual traumas and sort of learning how to be a whole person again now that I’ve stopped bottling everything up and actually let myself breathe again.
Since it’s a heavy topic with an emotional ending I was thinking I would Seawall/A Life it with another playwright of a similar topic and make a full women’s night of it. The only issue is that I have such high regard for my work (cocky that I made TWO people cry with it one time) that I’m having a hard time finding anyone who can attach themselves to my concept. I don’t want the exact same type of story, as the best shows are mirrored opposite types like life then death or something. But the opposite of assault is… not being assaulted? Acceptance? Not discovering pockets of emotion on it 17 years later that you were overconfident about hiding so well in the first place that you didn’t even think about realizing that they were bottled up? I don’t know what that is. I didn’t know I’d explode. *shrug*
I asked my buddy Kerri- she’s writing a play about rape and the aftermath of it such as the piled on trauma of having to go by yourself to the hospital for a rape kit and having to recount your experiences numerous times because nobody talks to other people there and don’t care that it gets worse and worse in your head (thus permanently scarring your soul a second time that night) each time you have to retell it. But her play is 90 minutes and that’s too long for this. Her secondary is only 10 minutes and that’s too short! Or is it? Maybe a 10 minute, a 30 minute and a 40 minute (mine) set up? I don’t know what her short is about though, she’s still finishing her full piece. Respect.
My ideal was to find a slightly more adjacent piece to open the show with- something that sets the tone but doesn’t have quite the violent attitude mine has. Not that I want something less impactful, just a different tone that still sparks conversation. I don’t want to write it myself, I think it would be beneficial to tell multiple stories on the topic from different points of view to really push that my story is not your story but we’re both valid. If I wrote something else out it would very likely be just as sinister as Eyes because I am not past that memory yet. Clearly.
Maybe I’m the one who needs validation by hitching my horse to a different cart than my own? I know that I’m not alone, and I’ve vocalized my story a lot in the last year so that I no longer feel like I’m hiding anything or living with secrets and lies I’ve been telling myself. I don’t feel as burdened and shook by it as I was when I started rediscovering all of the trauma in 2019 that I had barely realized I still had built up in a bottle somewhere. It’s not a thing to “get over” but to treat it as mourning a death, so it’s not about that either. I just feel strongly that two different situations and hearts would tell the story better, wider, more rounded. So, let me know if you know anyone who fits that, my only reader here. Nobody reads this.
When I was writing my play I was, in the back of my head, constantly thinking about how Mike would take it, like, if in my vision of visions this made it to an off Broadway stage like The Public and got some fire. Would he realize? Would he know it’s him? Would he be the (slightly) fictionalized Mike from within that retaliates? But now I’m more of the fuck that guy mood. So I want to start actively working on my play to expand it a few more minutes (probably 15 more minutes of performance time) while writing this tv show (also mentally exhausting) so that when theatres come back to life I have something to say when that proverbial phone rings. Because I’m sure a bunch of theatres on Broadway and such will try to fill seats by replying on old classics that they know people will pay for. But somewhere will be a company that wants to produce new works. Or strictly female driven works. Or new voices. You get me. Somewhere.
And that’s my title explained. Nine Stories prides itself on telling stories from minor voices- stories that shake up the emotions of live theatre. Stories that tell truths that so many are willing to ignore. Who aside from Slave Play and racism, what’s more ignored in the world than an abused woman just trying to survive? Probably a lot of other things, but I do know that I spent 17ish years feeling like I didn’t belong anywhere, wasn’t comfortable anywhere and turned myself off from normal and healthy relationships with rational and not abusive men. And that’s something someone else could learn from. How NOT to be me. If only Riva Marker would google search her own name like a nobody at home on a Friday night and find me basically begging her to meet for tea and ice cream. We can talk about Harry Potter.
