Swiss Cheese Playwriting

Do you ever want to do something so bad you can’t?

I’m in the throes of working on a new script at the moment, an execution of a concept I’ve been bandying about since I started writing for stage 3 years ago. I love this project so much, but I’m unfortunately finding myself disappointed with who’s at the helm of it— me. I originally put the project on ice awhile ago because I wanted to do it justice, and I didn’t think I was seasoned enough to execute it the way I envisioned, which I wasn’t. I’m finally feeling like it’s time, that this project makes sense for my development and is the proper amount of reach to push myself without setting myself up (a concept I think all creatives who are fulfilled by consistent output should acquaint themselves with, or at least a concept that has kept my practice moving forward). However, I often experience a specific kind of playwriting amnesia, where by the time I’m ready to start a new script I’m so excited I forget what writing a script actually entails.

It’s not flattering, but I am less of an academic playwright than I’d like to be. I don’t lack rigour, I don’t think, but the nature of being self taught means I have to seek out my own references (while I can pull examples of Dieter Ramsian “good design” out of my ass from a OCAD degree I am grateful for the experience of but ultimately no longer use). This kind of leads to a practice led as much by what I don’t know as what I do, and I’m worried as the works become more complex the holes start to show. A swiss cheese playwriting practice of someone who should’ve stood up to his parents more 3 years ago and switched majors. I often lament my lack of formal theatre training, even though I’ve been so lucky to receive various other forms of theatre education on the job over the last little bit, mostly by reading, and fucking up, and then having a very gracious person who knows more than me on the project telling me where I fucked up, and then reading about how not to fuck up again. It works, but it’s slow and bumbling, and feels especially embarrassing to try myself by fire in front of the community, when writing is already so intimate to me (so then why do you have a substack, idiot?)

When I’m feeling like this, it’s good to remind myself I do it because I love it. Writing is more than anything else in my life a true labour of love, sometimes emphasis on the labour. I write because I’m sick of toothless trans stories in mainstream media, and because I admire queer and trans theatre artists that are farther along than me, especially the ones I’m so privileged to work with. I write because god damn it it feels good. If the price of my love is my work’s awkward teenage phase being out there than so be it— there’s NOTHING more trans than that anyway.

All this to say, I’m excited about this piece and hope when it inevitably goes public (very, very TBD) it resonates. It’s about evil queers and neoliberal academia and toxic masculinity and sexiness, and if there are holes (history shows it likely will have some), maybe someone will think it’s a good piece of cheese anyway.