Making Time to Eat

Last year I wrote a big story for American Theatre magazine.

You can read it here. I’m pretty proud of it. To prepare, I interviewed seven playwrights who don’t have MFAs — artists who’ve made a career and a life for themselves without the three years in a university and the student loan debt that comes with it. I walked away from those phone calls with what is quite possibly the biggest lesson of my career so far: you have to keep challenging yourself, whether you have that degree or not.

I knew this, of course, but talking to these wonderful artists reminded me of what I went through after graduating from Emerson College in 2011. I went into that MA program right out of undergrad, knowing full well that I was going from a state school with a “If you want to do it, you need to make it happen for yourself” attitude — our school motto was quite literally Learn By Doing — to a private school with so many bells and whistles that you literally could not exhaust the school’s resources if you tried. And believe me, I tried. I helped open a state of the art facility while I was there, laying mylar and hanging lights and walking the catwalk of every theatre space just so I wouldn’t go into debt while I was in school. I’m glad I did all that when I was 21, when sleep mattered so little and it wasn’t a big deal to work 30-40 hours a week on top of my grad school course load.

Our school motto was Expression Necessary to Evolution. I honestly cannot tell you what that means. But what I can tell you is this: when I graduated, I immediately moved to DC because I was offered an apprenticeship there. Between free housing and food stamps, I could make a life there work. A few months into my apprenticeship, I pointed out that everyone I lived with had a different specialty — playwriting (me), directing (Elena), dramaturgy (Jamila), marketing (Antonio), lighting (Alison), scenic design (Nick), development (Martha), and business (Lorna). We started a shoe string theatre company, called it Field Trip because that’s what we called any opportunity to leave The Studio Theatre campus, and by that summer we’d not only developed a new play, but produced one too. Most of the house didn’t make it through the year, but some did.

I remember checking in with the class of 2011, undergrads I’d befriended during my time at the big shiny school. That first year out was rough for a lot of them, going from all the resources in the world to none. And while I was sticking with my first alma matter motto, they were trying to figure out why the next project hadn’t come together yet.

So many of those people are doing great now. And so much of making your way in this [insert expletive here] industry is sticking with it day after day, year after year.

But that was almost ten years ago.

And my conversations with those MFA-free playwrights reminded me that I haven’t been challenging myself lately, not in a way that used the resources available to me. Not in a way that would make Cal Poly Pomona proud. So I started a monthly get together, a way for me to bring in new pages to collaborators I love. One Monday night a month, I go all out cooking (usually something from Alison Roman). We eat and share and talk about our lives — our lives outside of theatre. There’s nothing competitive about it, and I haven’t yet figured out if that’s because everyone who comes over is so fundamentally different from each other or because they’re genuinely good people. And then, after we’ve all had our fill, we move to the living room and read new pages from what I’ve been working on.

We call it Test Kitchen. And last month, my friend Cheyenne made a cake.

It’s not a theatre company, but it’s also not a 29 hour reading contract, a structure, I’ve learned, just does not work for me. Everyone is there because they want to be there, and it makes me so happy that folks keep coming back. It’s not a revolutionary idea, but it brings me so much joy.

We’re meeting again on Monday. And even though I’m writing about it here, it still feels like a secret. It’s special. And I just think we deserve a little special in our lives.