Speechless

(ok, just kidding.  I'm not actually going to write a blank blog post titled "speechless", though of course that would be the only correct thing to do since if I can think of anything to write, then clearly I'm not speechless).

Today's reading of my play far exceeded any expectation I had even dared to think.  Honestly, I don't know that I had a single expectation.  Even when I read through the whole play myself yesterday, I didn't know what to think of it.  There were things I liked about it, but I didn't feel like I could see it.  I was so inside it, it was (is!) so fresh, that I couldn't take a step back and see the big picture.  I honestly wasn't even sure if I had told the story I wanted to tell.  I know this world so well now, having read so much about it, having listened to their music, that I had no idea what the story would look like to people who had none of the information in their heads that I have.

But people saw everything I wanted them to see and more.  The overall consensus amongst the actors and directors and writers there was don't touch it, submit this now.   Of course it will be revised in the development process, but no one could believe it was a first draft and they all think it is ready to be workshopped.  One of the actors is already scheming about presenting the idea to companies with whom she has a relationship to see if I can get a reading or workshop there.

Even as I am typing this, tears are coming to my eyes.  This project has been so long in the dreaming (at least 4 years), and so short in the making (just 3 months) that I still can't quite believe I did it.  On top of that, I have to admit I had started to lose faith in my writing.  Having had my first play rejected from so many places -- even places with which I had strong personal connections -- I was starting to wonder if maybe I can't really write.  My biggest fear in approaching this project was that I wasn't going to do it justice.  I believe so strongly in this story, I feel so passionately that it must be told, and I was scared that maybe I wasn't the person to do it.

But tonight confirmed that I am.  I do have the voice to tell this story.  There are no promises, of course, in this crazy world where the almighty dollar is always the bottom line.  But there is reason for that little candle of hope to flicker to life again, the hope that something I create could actually get produced and be seen by the wider world.  My mother -- the first person on the planet to get to read the play other than myself -- even dared utter the mythical words "when you when your Tony" tonight.  Dare I hope.