Sharpening my axe

So I've taken a short hiatus from generating a lot of new material for this blog. I wrote myself into a corner with the play that was going up on Mondays, so I stopped. And last week I just ran out of steam. The end of the academic year is a tough time, and given the work that I did over the January break, it was a particularly long and tiring spring.

I'm trying to find the balance between sticking to my writing practice and sharpening my axe. I find it very hard to take a rest from work. I think if I stop I'm going to miss out on an opportunity. I struggle with this feeling that I'm wasting time if I'm not actively working on something. My trainer once pointed out to me that a wood cutter can't cut wood if the axe isn't sharp. So taking time out to sharpen the axe is imperative. That metaphor really landed for me, and I'm trying to embrace it right now. Not get too anxious about productivity and just allow some time and space for rest and reflection.

My play "Bromancing the OK" is featured as the Play of the Week on TreePress this week, and you can read a copy of it for free! I also did an interview for them, which was a lot of fun. I talked about the axe sharpening in the interview, which made me think about including it for today's musing.  I hope you enjoy the play and the interview!

Artists I admire: TreePress

On Friday, I had the chance to meet with Laura Fisher and Jespal Rajdev, who with their co-founder Adrienne Ferguson, started an online marketplace called TreePress. I've known about TreePress since about this time last year, when the idea was in its initial stages. I've been watching the progression of the marketplace's offerings with interest, but my conversation with Laura and Jes really solidified in my mind that the entire concept behind their online presence is truly innovative and has the potential to shift the way theatrical collaborators find one other, particularly playwrights and producers and educators.

I would encourage you to visit the site and see for yourself, and watch how it develops over the next six months. That development and the articulation of their vision over time will do a far better job than I can at explaining exactly what will happen and how its happening.  However, I do want to say that I'm #grateful to Laura and Jes for explaining the idea of RELEVANCE to me as a way to measure a play's worth, rather than simply relying on the play's quality, one of only several factors that might go into a play's selection for production. It's very easy for me or anyone else to dismiss a play based on my own impressions of what "quality" is, but there are lots of other reasons that a producer, school, or theatre might choose to do a play: cast size, distribution of lines, subject matter, message to the audience, etc. All of these factors play a role.  "Of course they do," you might be saying to yourself, but I'm not sure that all of those reasons are necessary legible or conscious in the decision-making process about a play's quality. So I'm committing to thinking about a play's RELEVANCE rather than only about a play's quality, as that might help to create an overall clearer picture of why certain plays get produced and not others. There's power in making a gut reaction more legible. That's one of things I feel like TreePress is preparing to do really well.

For helping me to think differently and more openly about plays and their relevance, for sharing their ideas with me and asking me about mine, and for innovating in a field that desperately needs it (new play development), the founders of TreePress are the artists I admire for this week.