Day 23: We Are Survivors

I didn't read a play today. I'm going to Chicago very early tomorrow morning. And I'm all kinds of full on chicken wings. So I think indigestion and anxiety are going to be providing the bulk of the inspiration for this brief post.

The reason why I didn't read a play today (and kinda the reason why I'm full on chicken wings) is because I spent the bulk of the day helping Ian (my needtheater co-AD) at his job installing fancy window displays for high-end liquor and wine stores. I am paid more per hour to do this than I am to read scripts. Normally, I would tell you that this is a sad thing, the fact that theater professionals are underpaid and that Ian and I and all our theater friends have to work at these kinds of job in order to pay the bills and continue to do theater. I guess it is sad. I would love to be paid a real salary to make theater and I have spent the last seven years trying to figure out how to make this happen, only to find little success and much frustration. And we probably would make better theater if we could devote our professional lives to it and not waste hours trying to make ends meet with menial labor of all kinds. But maybe we wouldn't.

There's something to the scrappiness of this kind of life that is reflective of theater. Our never ending search for the next odd job is just like our search for the plywood we need, the costume we can borrow, the space we can use. It's all just a constant hustle and a frequently unpleasant and demeaning one at that. We have to be insane to choose this kind of life for ourselves and not just be office managers or plumbers or whatever. And every time we realize this (and we realize it every day), we are reminded that this insanity comes from our love for theater. It is a love that runs so deep that we literally cannot do anything else. Believe me, if we could, we would. And when you make something born out of that kind of love, it will always be infinitely better than if you had made it to be paid.