Search for intelligent life

I have long felt a bond of shared experience with the members of SETI, the organization that searches for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. They labor long hours, usually on top of the time they spend at their day jobs, preparing for an encounter with beings from elsewhere in the universe.

There is no guarantee that such beings, once encountered, would understand or care about any message we tried to deliver to them. Their motives, ethics, and desires might always be obscured from our understanding. They might regard with puzzlement or dismay the most carefully crafted expression of our hopes, our observations of our world and our lives.

I feel this bond of shared experience because the lonely, earnest, likely-futile-until-maybe-wow work of the SETI folks rhymes with a lot of my experience as a playwright. Despite all the talk about a script being a collaborative creation, until the play or screenplay is on the edge of production, the chief collaboration involves the writer, the writer's fragile imagination, and the interior editor who keeps saying it's all crap. Then, when the writer tries to get the attention of a potential producer--even a potential reader--all too often the response is a sniff of incomprehension. That's not just like everything we have ever seen before (while still being fresh and exciting)! Why should we even peruse it?

That's why writers' groups can be so precious. I recently attended my last meeting with Merrimack Valley Playwrights, a group I founded a few years ago. As usual, there were about 15 people present--playwrights, actors invited for the evening, and a couple of friends who are obviously gluttons for punishment.

The punishment lies in the fact that the scripts the actors perform are unfinished works, still stiff with splinters of uneasy text. But the pleasure lies there, too, as we are the first audience for these dewy words, and can give the new play its first feedback.

I have been part of other groups where the idea seems to be to deliver the most cutting dismissal, whether it is merited or not. But this current group is at the top of the league for creative feedback that the author can carry back to the writing dungeon and actually make use of. So the playwrights are not afraid, or not too afraid, to bring out their skinless, unfinished children for review.

I should explain the hat in the picture. I got to be an actor at this meeting, and one of my characters was obsessed with a pop singer and believed her communicate with her through his complex headgear. So we whipped up the hat as a surprise treat for the playwright--the delight when I put it on reminded me what an innocent, and productive, joy it is to take part in such readings.

It was my last meeting because we are on the edge of relocating. And in the new place, one of the first things I'll do is hunt out the local writers' group. And if there isn't one, I'll start one. SETI keeps searching, and so shall I.