After two incredibly busy weeks, the Third Annual Foothill College New Works Festival comes to an end. I can’t believe it — I remember looking at the summer of rehearsals and going, Wow, this is going to take forever, and like every time you have that thought: Poof. It’s over.

The whole experience was fabulous. Watching the director work with the actors, seeing the actors try various things, sitting through several rehearsals of not only my show but others to see how they were coming together: priceless. Also, my critical faculties zoomed way up during the process — as I told Mary Ann during our drives to and from Foothill, I was itching to get out my red pen and edit everyone’s play, not just my own. “Give me a chance, I’ll take out five minutes from everyone’s play!” I said. (This wasn’t an option for any of us; final edits were due July 24: they were not chancing playwrights rewriting up until opening night.)

The only thing that had me really, really worried was that the show was really, really long (two and a half hours, including intermission) and my play was last. Why was mine last? Was this a comment on my play? Would the audience even stay that long to see mine? (Seriously, I can overanalyze anything.) I liked the friends who told me mine was last because you always save the best for last. I have no idea how in fact the show order was chosen, but that explanation suited me just fine.

And then, August 10, the birthday of moi, the New Works Festival opened. I discovered that I can’t see a play as if for the first time: all I could see was where the actors did something different, or missed a line. Why didn’t the audience laugh at that? Or, why did they laugh at that line, that was never funny before. I couldn’t accurately judge what the audience thought of any one play, but they sure seemed to like the evening overall. The actors had so much more energy with an actual audience there. Lines went faster, action became more electric. Theater is a participatory sport, whether or not the audience knows it.

Darin went to the show on Saturday night.

Darin’s special genius is being able to honestly assess things for what they are, point out their strengths, and analyze their weaknesses. This turns out to be a very marketable skill (as you might imagine), although a couple of times it’s really, really annoyed some people; they don’t want to hear criticism, they just want to hear how great everything is. If this is what you want, Darin is not your guy. I don’t show everything I write to Darin, because if I ask him what he thinks, he’s going to tell me. Only when I’m sure I’m ready to hear it do I ask.

When he came home from the show, he said, “I’m not sure which was the best, yours or (other play), but I liked both of them for (list of reasons here).” And you have no idea how much that critique meant to me. We discussed some of the other plays too, and he had much the same take on most of them that I did. I’m sure if I would have let him, he would have done an analysis of my play that would show me where I could strengthen it and explain a bit more, and which parts I could cut but I didn’t ask and he’s not going to volunteer (because he likes being married and he knows my process by now).

My friend Rob went with Darin Saturday and told me he really enjoyed it too, particularly mine. He even said, “You should write more of these,” which was nice to hear. And he even explained to me why mine was last: “no dull moments…
perhaps not every joke worked, but one had not time to ponder it because, hey, here’s the next one.”

So, it’s all over now. Alas. I am quite fired up to finish a full-length play and submit to a few festivals. The Foothill Playwriting class starts Sept. 26 — if you’re looking for a great writing class with a committed (and committable) bunch of writers in it, I highly recommend it.