"Hello. I am a lower species of creature. I am a writer."
With words eerily similar to a 12-stepper's confessional mantra—and that doubtless cost me enormous respect, most of it my own—I tentatively introduce myself to the assembled actors about to read through my short play, Talc, for the first time.
They all must look pleasant enough to rational folk. Me, I can't tell. All I see through my mind's eye are hooded devils poised around a guillotine, about to lop off the head of my precious baby, and snickering as they shred what's left of my tattered creative soul with demonic glee.
(What can I say? We writers dig drama.)
But really, who can blame them? The genuine Beelzebub in this room is me.
My day job (writing)/night job (attending) includes being the Weekly's theater reviewer, for which I'm licensed to Pass Almighty Judgment Upon Thee, actors, directors, board members, crew members and volunteers of Las Vegas Little Theatre (among other companies), in whose potentially vengeful hands my fragile little ego now rests. The Critic at the mercy of The Criticized.
Now the smartass is a quivering mass, confidence gone, cockiness mocked. Or so it feels.
How did I wind up in the crosshairs of one of my most frequent (though always cordial) targets?
LVLT sent out an SOS for original plays to comprise their next Insomniac Project, a late-night series providing actors, directors and writers room to experiment with works whose quirkiness might not be suitable—or commercial enough—for audiences of the 8 p.m. main-stage productions. This particular Project will cap LVLT's May staging of Steel Magnolias.
And Talc—a dark comedy about a man's trip back to his hometown barbershop—was selected.
(No quid pro quo ethical entanglements: I afford them no special consideration in reviews, and will not cover the series that includes my own piece. And they pay me the princely sum of squat.)
It's far from uncommon for critics to dabble in playwriting (see Shaw, George Bernard—I'm very particular about the company I keep). The urge to critique theater and create theater spring from the same passion. You'd think this artistic solidarity would transcend my raging paranoia and link me spiritually to the committed thespians surrounding me.
You'd be wrong.
If you can smell fear, someone call a fumigator. I'm stinkin' up the joint.
The plays are read in rapid succession and mine's on deck. Seated in a circle with several directors, unfamiliar scripts balanced on their laps, the actors prepare to act. I prepare to die.
Life's a comedy, after all. So is this play.
Fear No. 1: It's not comic.
Fear No. 2: See Fear No. 1.
An actress utters my first line of dialogue.
I flinch—as if slapped. WHAP! My chest tightens and my hand instinctively snaps into shield position over my eyes, which are deliberately downcast. If I act invisible, surely I will be.
These words aren't fit to be spoken by man nor beast nor anyone on The O.C. Certainly they should never be foisted upon an audience with an IQ higher than a plate of fettuccine.
The critic in me is crumbling. What authority do I have to render judgment on what I so clearly cannot do myself? You know the ol' adage: "Those who can, do. Those who can't are full of shit."
An actor responds. My words again. And I have to physically force myself, shove myself back into my chair, looking like the guy Patrick Swayze's spook belted in the kisser in the third act of Ghost.
I am desperate to lunge toward the actors, reach down their throats, yank my words from their windpipes, fling them beyond our immediate perimeter, scream "Fire in the hole!" and duck. Then beg forgiveness in a waterworks display of such oceanic proportions that I could best Jimmy Swaggart (and for that matter, Demi Moore in Ghost) with one tear duct tied behind my back.
I don't. If they can soldier on, I can suffer on.
Their back-and-forth goes back and forth, a two-person volley of dialogue that, surprisingly, doesn't seem quite as mortifying as before. And at the inaugural punch line ... a laugh. An honest-to-God, unforced, instinctual, straight-from-the-gut guffaw.
I could get into this, babe.
More follow. ... I wallow ... in a joy I can't begin to describe. The rush is remarkable. Even the actors seem to be groovin' to it. (Or maybe they're just acting like it. These are unpaid professionals, after all.)
Finally, we arrive at the play's central theme, met with a burst of surprised giggles. And the deepest sigh of relief I've ever heaved (and I've done my share of heaving). The room, till now barely in motion in super-slo-mo, as if I'm gazing at it through an acid haze, regains its natural momentum. I'm breathing again.
It appears Las Vegas Little Theatre can work with this strange concoction of mine. (My sense of humor tends toward the twisted, which accounts for the playful whispers to me of, "You're very weird" and "You're one sick bastard." Which I proudly cop to.)
But there is more at work here than one writer's appeased (for the moment) ego. There is, for a critic of the arts, the clichéd but nonetheless valuable walk-a-mile-in-the-other-fella's-shoes experience.
Critics need not be, or have ever been practitioners of what they critique, be it dance, theater, filmmaking, painting, sculpting, etc. What they must be is knowledgeable of a genre's history, up on its trends, versed in its traditions, conversant in its vocabulary, able to separate the professional from the personal, and capable of applying a fair and consistent standard of critical thinking to it all.
For those of us who park our privileged asses in the seats, turn a judgmental eye toward the stage and furiously scribble notes that may inflict pleasure or pain when published, thrusting ourselves squarely in the center of an artist's vulnerability is an asset.
There's much to be said for critical distance and objectivity. There's much to be said for theatrical experience and empathy. Finding the intersection where they complement, rather than contradict each other, is the critic's challenge.
Embracing this opportunity to peer out through the artist's eyes, I'll sweat the performances in the grandest tradition of the stage, hope that none of it qualifies as flop sweat, and pray that critics have mercy on my tattered creative soul.
Then I'll read the reviews, grateful that long after this show is history, my job as Beelzebub still pays the mortgage.
(Talc and other one-act plays will be performed May 13-15 and 20-22 at Las Vegas Little Theatre.)