I happened upon a panel discussion at the Orem library tonight
that featured Eric Samuelsen, Melissa Leilani Larson, and Wendy Gorley. Well, that makes it sound as if I was
wandering the stacks and heard them talking.
In actuality, this morning Eric posted about remembering that he was
doing something tonight and forgetting what it was. When the mystery was solved I realized that I
had nothing going on tonight and could ask my live-in babysitters to get the
kids ready for bed while I ran off to the library. Hooray!
It seemed like just the kick-in-the-pants I needed, playwriting-wise,
and that’s what it ended up being.
It was a pretty intimate little gathering where the
playwrights told fun stories about their experiences writing and producing
plays. Words of wisdom were
offered. Questions were answered. A giant chocolate cake came into play at one
point. And I ended up looking like a
dork, which I learned from the playwrights is something I should embrace.
They made lots of good points, but the one that stuck with
me (because it hit the closest to home) is that you should embrace failure, not
fear looking stupid, and write lots and lots of cruddy stuff (so that you can
have something to revise and revise into something better). In the spirit of that sentiment, when I heard
someone introduced to another person as a poet I took the next possible moment to
introduce myself to him and to pitch my open mic to him. He looked somewhat perplexed, mostly bemused,
and talked with me about BYU (I graduated shortly after he began teaching
there). Then, later, I heard two of the
playwrights talking in amazement about having this amazing BYU poet in
attendance and how in awe they were of him.
Yes, I had pitched my budding performance poetry venue to one of the
preeminent LDS poets, who very well might be the sort of poet who thinks that
slam poetry isn’t actually poetry, who certainly doesn’t have a huge desire to
hear a poem about the importance of tampons or the horrors of too tiny
bikinis. I kind-of wanted to sink into a
crack in the floor.
But then I embraced my dorkiness. Because, you know what? That sentence up there makes a whole lot of
assumptions about a person I actually don’t know at all. Tie-clad BYU professors that students worship
may very well be closet performance poets.
You never know. And part of my mission
with this creative writing open mic is to draw in a segment of the writing
population that isn’t already in the slam poetry scene. That would be this poet for sure. Definitely following up the dorky encounter
with a professional but dorky email.
The other thing that made me feel dorky in a positive way is
the restlessness that this discussion made me feel about one of my major goals
with moving up to Utah County. I had
lost my theater community and I wanted that back. In the past few years I have stoked the fires
of my writing with poetry but haven’t really gotten back on the playwriting
horse. My hope with this move is that I
can establish a new artistic community up here.
I don’t know how that will play out.
I don’t know who will be involved in that long-term. I do know, however, that it takes time to
establish those connections and friendships.
And it takes time to get back on that horse. So maybe it’s a good thing that I won’t have
live-in babysitters for much longer because what I most need right now, as I am
establishing the community part of the dream, is to establish the art part of
the scene. Instead of dashing off to a
fun panel discussion to get a kick in my playwriting pants, I need to spend an
hour at home writing. I need to give
myself my own kick in the pants. Because
I’m a dork and I embrace that. And I’m
going to write a ton of really crappy stuff, including introspective blogs,
saccharine novels, ridiculous poems, and contrived plays. Complete drivel. Look forward to it, Utah County.
