Risk & Nerves

A leap, a risk, a performance is an experience & I am not in control

Art creates a profound connection

between the artist and audience.

Through that connection,

both can heal.

~ Rick Rubin, from “The Creative Act: A Way of Being”

Some questions I am asking myself this morning, a week away from a public performance, a first staged reading of a new, full-length play, my first play in over a decade. I am choosing to share my play, First Starling, with an audience. I am preparing well. I have a trusted, exceptional cast, a decent stage/performance space, a script I have thoughtfully revised and sharpened. I’ve had enough experience having my plays performed for the public that I know nerves are a normal and necessary and tolerable part of the experience of being a playwright. But, thematically, I am also feeling vulnerable. My play is about healing shame. So, there’s that.

Who will come? Will I have the audience I need to have? How will they feel as they watch my play? What will they think? What will open or close in them? What will happen that I don’t expect? How will I be surprised? Will I make a mistake, hurt someone? Will I make people feel things they don’t want to feel? Will people feel better? Will they know more about themselves or others? Will I make a breakthrough, help someone? Who am I to say this, show this? I am a risk-taker, a truth-teller, a healer. I am healing something in me. How much presence do I have a right to ask for from my audience?

I have some answers to my nerves too:

Kelly, you are sooooo not in control of this––and you don’t need to be. You’ve learned time and time again: Enter the ritual, the ritual will take over. And the ritual will surprise you. Do this performance because to not do it would be the failure. Doing it is not failure. Not doing it is a shame. You can trust this process. You trust your actors. They want very much to perform this play, your play, the one you wrote. It’s their play too. They are making it their own, they are having their creative risk, their creative power and discovery, their nerves and their healing. They are grateful to you for writing it so they can perform it, because they are risk-takers and truth-tellers and healers too. The three of us are choosing to let our nerves be our nerves and to walk into the creative space of the stage and see

what if what if what if. . .