Fictional Future

For one of my classes, we were split up into groups and given fictional theatre companies.  We were to each take a role in the company and complete some tasks that position holds.  I was lucky enough to become the artistic director of the Susan Glaspell Theatre, a regional theatre in Greenwich Village that focuses on the development of new works.  Two years ago, I had this crazy dream that I might want to be an artistic director “when I grow up.”  As those two years have passed, I have scaled down my goals, made them more central to what I consider to be my speciality: the literary department.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I would kill for a job in a literary office in a theatre next year.  I would absolutely murder for it.  But this assignment, this absolutely crazy idea of making myself the artistic director of a theatre brought back those feelings, those ambitions.

Some in the class saw the assignment as an end of the year blow off thing, and if we’re being honest, it had all the potential to be just that.  But, thank God, my group didn’t see it that way.  We went crazy.  We began to imagine a history for our theatre.  There is a next door space called “The Susie” that is a coffeeshop in the daytime and a bar at night.  We planned an entire fictional season of works that don’t exist.  Something inside of me will not let go of this damn fictional theatre.  I want it to be my life.  I think I’m going to save my mission statement and letter to patrons to my computer, as a sort of time capsule.  If I reopen them in twenty years and my life isn’t what I had planned at 21, I’m going to start over until I get it right.  I need this to be my life.  I want to make a difference and do exciting, relevant theatre.

Here’s our mission statement:

The Susan Glaspell Theatre has dedicated the last fifty years to producing new plays that speak to the contemporary moment.  The Glaspell has a split mission: we both produce some of the most vital and well-known American voices in our regular season and encourage playwrights at the beginnings of their careers with our one-month staged reading series, The Birdcage.  The Susan Glaspell aims to be a haven for its writers, lovingly known as Canaries, who are both developing and mounting new work.  The Glaspell strives to engage with society as it is today, and, as a result, present theatre breaks boundaries, creates new styles, and challenges its audiences.  Throughout its history, the Glaspell has proven itself one of the most daring and socially engaged theatres in New York City, and it will continue to provide audiences relevant, exciting, youthful theatre for years to come.

I know it may seem crazy, and it probably is, but this project has inspired me to finish up next semester and head out into the real world.  No matter how scary it may be, I have this crazy made-up dream as my light at the end of the tunnel, and I’ll do whatever it takes to get there.