Speechless
I got a grant from the Durham Arts Council to support the production of my new play this April. There was an awards ceremony on January 12th, and grantees were asked to be prepared to say a few words about their project. In typical fashion, I wrote a bunch of stuff down, and then edited it five or 138 times. I asked the director of the program if there would be time to read a three-minute speech and she said probably there would be, but that I should gauge the audience's energy level by the time I received my award; I would be tenth of twelve recipients. I reconstructed the speech in play format because it has a remarkable and true postscript, and also because I'm, like, a playwright or something.
SPEECHLESS, OR THUS ALWAYS TO "THUS ALWAYS TO TYRANTS" by Adam Sobsey Time: January 12th, 2007, early evening.
(The previous grantee has just left the stage; applause. The CHAIRWOMAN of the Emerging Artists' Grant committee takes the podium.)
CHAIRWOMAN (Scattered applause. ADAM rises from his seat next to PAUL FRELLICK, the director of Deep Dish Theater, in the audience. He goes to the stage. ELLA FOUNTAIN PRATT, the 85-ish doyenne of the ceremony, hangs around ADAM's neck the plastic star medallion that each grantee has received. ADAM has to lean over in order for the diminutive MRS. PRATT to reach over his head. Some comic business in getting this done. The CHAIRWOMAN gives ADAM an envelope and shakes his hand: the usual left-right awkwardness in this handoff/handshake. ADAM is wearing his suit. He pulls from his pocket two folded up pieces of paper, takes the podium.)
ADAM
There's probably nothing in the Durham Arts Council vaults to confirm this claim, but it's true that the first play I ever wrote was produced in the theater directly below us. It was August of 1989, when I was eighteen years old, and the play was called Sic, Semper Tyrannis!. I had just graduated from high school and was about to enroll at Brown University, where I would wind up studying with the Pulitzer Prizewinner Paul Vogel. I had not in 1989 ever heard of Paula Vogel, nor that she taught at Brown. I had no thought of seriously writing plays, for that matter, in college or anywhere else. Around that time, I expected that I would marry my high school girlfriend, whom I performed with on the stage downstairs, and who was about to go to Wesleyan in Connecticut.
I not only wrote Sic, Semper Tyrannis!, I directed it, acted in it, designed the set and costumes -- which I think amounted to a bed, a starter pistol, two white shirts, and two pairs of black pants -- and did the marketing. The marketing consisted of putting up around Ninth Street eight-and-a-half by eleven cardstock displaying the relevant information about the play under a graphic of a finger pointing to the right. I have a vague memory of a meaningful finger-pointing stage direction in the play, which is probably why I chose this image. I'm not sure, though; I no longer have the script, and I can remember little about Sic, Semper Tyrannis! except that it was inspired by the legendary words of John Wilkes Booth before he shot Lincoln at the Ford Theatre, and was a sort of Albee/Beckett hybrid, like Waiting for Godot Meets The Zoo Story. (briefly extemporizes:) A bad idea, in theory and in practice. (He makes a mental note to add this line into the speech later, should he (for no productive reason) choose to edit it again. "Underline 'and'," he thinks, even though he didn't emphasize "and" when he said it. Back to reading from his document:) That I don't have the script anymore is a good indicator of my indifference toward writing plays when I was eighteen.
It is eighteen years later and I am still writing plays. Apparently I am married to playwriting, despite my best efforts to leave it. And my approach, for most of the intervening years, has been much the same as the one I took for Sic, Semper Tyrannis! After not writing a play for a long while, having sworn it off or maybe just gotten interested in something else, I would write another one. Then I would raise money for the play or spend my own; rent a theater or have one donated; find a director and designers and a cast, or direct or design or cast myself; do all the props, budgeting, marketing and publicity; and sometimes replace the director I hired with myself when things weren't going well between the director and the cast. And sic, semper tyrannis means "thus always to tyrants."
In my defense, I'm not really a tyrant, just a perfectionist; and good collaborators are hard to find, which is why I've been in the habit of doing so much of the work myself. For my last production, a play called Hang Town Fry, I asked Paul Frellick from Deep Dish Theater to direct. I hoped and suspected that he would be a good collaborator. I underestimated. It turned out that he was such a good collaborator that I wanted to write another play just so I could bother him to direct my work again. Which is pretty much what I did, and that's the project the Arts Council is now funding, and I'm grateful because really good directors are like good spouses: rare, incredibly rare, and able to help you realize your dreams; so when you find one, you have to hang on. (Chooses, suddenly, to omit the following sentence, lest it encourage anyone to think his speech is finished:) [This grant is helping me to hang onto a really good director, and thus to realize my dreams.]
I am married to playwriting, and good directors are like spouses. Why all this matrimonial talk? The Gratitude of Wasps, this play of mine we're doing at Deep Dish in April, is about, among other things, divorce. Which is to say, marriage. (Someone in the audience laughs. ADAM is momentarily distracted. "What's funny about this?" he wonders to himself. "Do you have to be married to laugh at this line? Is it plain stupid? Does it need to be addressed in my play?" This all goes by in less than one second. ADAM begins reading quite quickly, wanting to wrap things up and not hog the podium.) Standing here in the Durham Arts Council, what comes back to me are all the promises I made, and didn't make, two decades ago. Eighteen years old, having no great interest in playwriting, and thinking I would marry my girlfriend. Life is full of shock and surprise, and it is also full of tacit commitments that, almost without your knowing it, wind up defining you. My high school girlfriend and I broke up two weeks after we left for different colleges; fourteen years later, on the cusp of a huge leap in her career as a writer, she died in a plane crash. And despite every effort made to leave playwriting, I'm still writing plays, with more commitment to the craft than I've ever had before. Now that I'm thirty-five, I think I've finally taken the vow. So I want to thank DAC for bearing witness.
(Respectful, controlled applause. ADAM folds up his document, pockets it, leaves the podium, takes his designated seat on the stage where the grantees go after they receive their plastic star. The rest of the ceremony passes quickly. Our local Grammy-winning jazz singer, NNENNA FREELON [that spelling is correct], sings "Amazing Grace" to the grantees, who are seated in two rows stage right. ADAM's mind detours from this song to the Low song, "(That's How You Sing) Amazing Grace," which he has lately been listening to obsessively for two weeks. The CHAIRWOMAN adjourns the ceremony; applause; the twelve GRANTEES are asked to leave the theater in advance of the audience, in order that a photographer may take a group picture. ADAM gets up to leave with the others. As he heads down the vomitorium toward the lobby, a SHADOWY FIGURE hisses to him:)
SHADOWY FIGURE (SHADOWY FIGURE thrusts a file folder into ADAM's hands. ADAM takes it, leaves the theater, enters the lobby, opens the folder. In it is a yellowing copy of Sic, Semper Tyrannis!.) (The GRANTEES go into the atrium; the PHOTOGRAPHER snaps a few pictures. The GRANTEES return to the lobby of the theater, where the audience members are now gathered, eating and drinking. ADAM sees his MOTHER, PAUL FRELLICK -- and then spots JEFFRYN STEPHENS, the director of Young People's Performing Company, in which ADAM performed in high school in the small theater directly below the PSI Theatre. ADAM understands, all at once, that the shadowy figure was JEFFRYN herself.) ADAM JEFFRYN ADAM JEFFRYN ADAM (Lights down. End of play.)
Place: PSI Theatre, Durham Arts Council.
Adam Sobsey.
Adam Sobsey!
Oh, wow. (reads a few lines to himself, silently.)
Jeffryn!
Adam!
Where did you get this?
I happened to wander into the theater just when you were giving your speech. I was downstairs finishing up; I didn't even know the ceremony was happening tonight. One of the security guards told me about it as I was leaving to go home, so I decided to pop in. When I heard you speaking I ran downstairs. The script was there, filed under "S." I hang onto things. Never know when you're going to need them. You can keep it.
(Speechless.)
