Double tap center mass, one in head.
The original director for Vox Pandora quit two weeks ago. Her reasons are her own, and I will not go into them, in part because she wasn’t completely forthcoming with the details of her decision. I can speculate an awful lot, but choose not to, as such an activity is both counterproductive and crazymaking.
All things considered, I can understand the general motives for her departure. And I appreciate her foresight, as well as her timing in backing out of the project before rehearsals began in earnest (we’ve only done a table reading so far). The show has picked up a new director who was at the table reading and who I feel very happy with after a recommendation from New Leaf’s Artistic Director Brandon, and a preliminary meeting between the two of us. I have little concern about the project itself at this point; it is still in good hands.
Nonetheless, I still feel hurt. The former director announced her decision via an email to myself, Brandon, and production manager Nick. There was a little more e-mail volleying between her and Brandon to smooth out the suddenly turbulent waters, and beyond that there has been silence. While I know that it is better to simply move on and focus on the task at hand, I want some sort of personal resolution. But then, what else can you expect from the playwright in this situation?
Because I sat down with you and your enthusiasm, months and months ago, and not only did you inspire in me faith in your ability to meet the challenges of my play, you inspired in me faith that the challenges of the play were worth being met…you made me believe that I had created something truly special, which I’d stopped feeling myself as time went on and the luster disappeared. You varnished my own self-confidence and left me feeling sterling silver instead of dull pewter. We had a number of invigorating conversations about design and about vision; we sat through the grueling casting process together. We had something good going here and I can’t believe it was so seemingly easy for you to leave it behind that your means of doing so was equivalent to breaking up with my answering machine.
I know this is not a very professional way of looking at the situation, and if anything, the departure was certainly professional. But a Mozambique Drill is also very professional, and I find it hard to appreciate the precision when I’m the one taking bullets.
I wish I weren’t angry about this. I’m certainly very capable of keeping that anger contained, but the problem is that the anger is languishing on death row and filing frivolous appeals, when I’d rather the damn thing just accept its last plate of medium well porterhouse so I can walk it down the hall and be done with it.
Self-importance is using relationship and death metaphors to describe a small crisis regarding a work of fiction.
Creative Control 