Sean Christopher Lewis

I write this while pretty and awfully sick in New Mexico. I just got off stage and am lying in bed downing fluids and trying to waste time before I go to sleep. The show I’m in went well despite myself- it’s called THE TEACHER SHOW it’s at the REVOLUTIONS INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL (which is dope) and is a collaboration written and performed with the amazing artists Idris Goodwin and Megan Gogerty. We sold out and people stood afterwards which was very nice (though to be honest I always feel like when I get a standing ovation it’s not deserved, my Catholic self hate never leaves me).

So while I was buried in the dressing room bathroom (sorry Megan and Idris) I could overhear them talking and an interesting thing that came up was this exchange (I’m gonna out them)

MEGAN: I don’t send out plays anymore.

IDRIS: No, fuck that. Waste of time.

MEGAN: It is! A waste of time! I mean should I spend 6 months killing myself over this to send to people who will never read it? Or who will want to change it? Should I?

IDRIS: No.

MEGAN: No.

I don’t think they could hear me. I said “no” too. Well, as best I could.

So, as I lay here wanting to go to sleep I wonder now how interesting. You have three playwrights. Me, Idris and Megan. Now between us you have a Jerome Fellowship, an NNPN Residency, an upcoming production at the Humana Festival, 2 Kennedy Center Awards, the NNPN Smith Prize, Barrymore Award, B. Iden Payne Nomination, Oneill Playwrights Residency, Inge Fellowship… and so on and so on. That’s the short form.

And none of us think it is worth our time to submit plays.

NONE OF US.

And we aren’t the only ones. I have a friend- who was not int he dressing room, he’s got a big Award they give out in NY- and we had a similar conversation a year back (I don’t out him because it was a year ago and who knows maybe he’s submitting to 10 minute play festivals on NYC PLAYWRIGHTS.COM as we speak, I don’t want to presume).

This is where the gatekeepers are helpful. Agents are part of that. I don’t know if Megan or Idris have agents, I never ask. I don’t really care. I used to care about agents- in all honesty- as that last tangible part of legitimacy. I have wanted one in the past not because I believed they could do anything for me. But really because in this hazy field the absence of one could gnaw at my insecurities. Please give me one more supposedly legitimizing thing.

Now, I don’t care. For awhile. An agent could never do for me what I am doing for myself.

But that does not solve the NO PLAY MAP. I think, and I am going to reduce, that a of online flaming about theater is all no diversity, no interesting programming, no risk, no progression… All reasonable and honest qualms. Qualms felt to such a result that separate of one another a bunch of playwrights are just not sending their work out to folks. THE NO PLAY MAP.

But I know a lot of playwrights are putting themselves on.

Dano Madden- NNPN Resident. About to open a show in NY with the Artful Conspirators (the Ikea play and it’s dope)

Samuel Brett Williams- NNPN resident. Just started Camisade (he’s got an agent but we won’t hold it against him, somebody’s got to send the manila)

J. Holtham- I don’t know him but the New Black Fest.

Obviously, I started a company.
Megan tours.
And there’s so many more that I’m too ill to really search for…

But it reminds me of my mom when i was in grade school and kids were mean to me. And wouldn’t be my friend and she’d say:

“Why would you want to be friends with people who treat you like that?”

Why indeed?

If theaters want to be buildings, let’em.
Theater, the art, as we know is people just doing it. Putting themselves on.
I need to sleep.

Danny Brown is a rapper who doesn’t look like a rapper. He wears tight clothes. He wears his hair wild and to the side. As he says he dresses however he wants in an industry where image is everything. “I dress like this so that I can tell who not to fuck with. Like if someone won’t bump with me because of how I’m dressed, fuck them. I know they wasn’t open to my music to begin with.”

It reminds me of something Morgan Jenness told me about the Iranian experimental director Reza Abdoh (whose work is an unexpected influence on me). “Reza would leave the door open for the first ten mintues of his shows because people would see the first few images, the homosexuality, the violence… and they would leave. After they left he would close the door and say ‘Now the play can begin.’”

Danny Brown is 30- ancient in the hip hop game. Only this year has he really gotten signed and started to get notice from the mainstream audience. Note- I did not say mainstream radio or mainstream producers. But audience… As he says:

“I wasn’t on a timeline. I wasn’t never tripping on [being 30]. I would still do this whether I was talking to you or not. The whole point of why it took so long [for me to pop off] is like before the Internet you couldn’t get in this hip-hop shit. You really gotta blame hip-hop. You can’t blame me because I been dope. So you really gotta blame the hip-hop business.”
(more…)

You create… not simply because you can. And not because you are special. You create because your need is different. Your friend needs money because he never had any, your neighbor needs comfort because he grew up not knowing it… you need communion because you feel alone. You need communication because you can only speak so long to yourself.

You will have days and they will feel like entire lives where you will sit in coffee shops, you will write and write and write and feel fulfilled. You will feel your hand reaching out in a way that you can’t imagine it doing on the street, reaching to a stranger’s grasp. And you will have days that will feel like years where you will feel your hand go unmet… you will see only what you haven’t accomplished- what you haven’t accomplished will be the fear that you are still alone.

You will forget the nights where you so clearly weren’t. Where people sat silent and listened to you… but you will forget and you will look at others who seem to have better audiences, better buildings, better and deeper pockets and you will dismiss what you’ve been saying, what you’ve been hearing… it will no longer count to you.

You’ll hear people talk about careers and moves, agents and publicity… and you’ll forget what the dream originally was: not Louis XIV type houses with models and the Cristal! No! No! It was you, wasn’t it, old and in a house of books bearing your name, it was you in an old theater your wrinkled lips smiling at a work done that still challenged you, that still demanded that you be better and all those who said “no” are gone and all those who doubted have left the building and it is now just you and the work.

You create because the loneliness itself is a mirage and it is through fantasy, through story, through the naked sensitivity of your own tongue that reminders are made. Reminders that tell you that the world is filled with the young at heart, the beautiful of mind, the adventurous of spirit… the world is actually filled with people as scared and in hiding as you. You first wrote because you thought that might be true, you stood on stage because somewhere that case was made in your mind.

You create, never forget, to remind them they are not alone, too.

1.

Today is the 2 and a half year anniversary of Working Group Theatre. and the third year anniversary of the idea. With no planning it got commemorated in a few ways we never could imagine:

The NY Times Magazine presented the text of one of our plays.
American Theater Magazine reminded me of my Assistant Directing (or “more coffee for you sir?”) days.
In Iowa people claimed I need to be watched.
And Mayberry, our next big touring show garnered some more buzz…

And all week I’ve been lucky enough to be a guest at Under the Radar. A gracious action of Mark Russell beyond compare.

It’s all a bit overwhelming. I mean, what we are doing was the dream. And it’s easy to focus on the negatives, actually, when this all goes on. You think of all the people who told you, you couldn’t.

You think of the Iowa Professor who asked Martin why he was wasting his time on this “little Iowa theater thing.”

Or the granting institutions who questioned how innovative it was to create a company in the middle of the country with international artists because we couldn’t understand the red part of the map on election night without actually being there.

I have repeated things in the crazy two years to the wildly brave company members who have somehow talked themselves into this trip we’ve been on.

You Become What You Are.
(more…)

Today starts a crazy Winter and Spring.

I am in NYC for the next two weekends performing KILLADELPHIA at the Drilling Company Theatre for APAP (Association Performing Arts Presenters) theaters and staff. A few months ago Mark Russell from Under the Radar called and invited me to be an artist at the festival’s speed dating event- allowing some face time with people who make the definitive decision on what their communities see.

This is a healthy and useful new play model. In one morning I’ll meet 100+ presenters all listening to me talk about me and my company’s work. This is better than a blog or a map and Mark is doing it (albeit with support from some Downtown institutions) but on a much lower budget.

NY for me is always a couch surfing adventure and many folks ar emaking my stay this time through possible (the mighty Matt Dellapina being one- go see his show, he’s the star of it and he has a beard. WORTH THE PRICE OF ADMISSION).

It’s a really gracious invite and thing that Mark is doing. Anyone who reads this knows I don’t work with agents, I don’t really submit plays for the most part anymore either- instead I create projects- and I live and operate from Iowa. This is exposure i don’t think i would have gotten if I had stayed in NY (mainly because i would not have created the body of work I now have).

It’s a dog fight even with the invites to get people to come- some theaters and presenters I have relationships with are making the time but as always getting to more folks like that when it’s the middle of festival city in NY (and I’m performing much further uptown) is hard.

But it’s exciting and gratifying to get the shot. We’re two years into this Iowa adventure- one a lot of artists trusted me on- and it’s been good, no great, so far. I’ve learned an incredible amount.

I’m glad it’s this show, though. This show i have lived with for four years now. That I’ve had the chance to bring to prisons and detention centers, to advocacy groups and victim’s rights… It is always an honor to share these stories that were given to me and to share this experience i was lucky enough to have.

It changed my life.
What more can you say then that?

#newplay
#2amt