Tiny tenterhooks

At the end of the summer I had the chance to take the ferry across the Bay of Fundy to Saint John, New Brunswick, for a weekend playwriting workshop called "Script Happens". The Saint John Theatre Company put on the event, and a gentler, more welcoming bunch of theatre folks I have not met.

The theatre had Stephen Massicotte, the author of Mary's Wedding and many other plays, as dramaturg for the weekend. He got to work with five nervous playwrights on short plays they had submitted. Each of us had time with Stephen, and then hours and hours (but far too few hours) through the rest of the Saturday to try to rewrite our scripts in light of Stephen's wise questions. Then, on Sunday, we got to enjoy table readings of the scripts by some of the theatre's regular actors.

The tenterhooks part is this: any day now we should hear which three plays will get full productions in 2015, and which will get staged readings. I would love to see my little script stood up. I can see it pretty clearly in my mind's eye, and there it is both funny and touching. But I am afire to know the affect it would have on an audience who is made up of people who are not me.

You send out scripts and short stories, and over and over again nothing happens. Nothing. But something nice happens just often enough that it adds Christmas-ornament glitter to the workaday hues of the writer's life. I would write even if nobody ever read what I wrote, you know. But having the chance to share what I write with others is really too good to miss.