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I remember sitting in a classroom three summers ago at a playwriting conference in Southampton, New York. Marsha Norman was our instructor and it was difficult for me to pay attention to the personal story she was sharing with us, because I was so awestruck by her presence. Somehow, the phrase "the moment I felt my entire life change" filtered in through my daze of adoration as she told us about the first performance of her play 'night, Mother. She knew that success had arrived immediately by the immense wave of love and applause from the audience. Marsha was right: her life would indeed never be the same. 'night, Mother won, among many other awards, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Not bad for a girl from Louisville, Kentucky.
As I looked down at her words of encouragement written across the title page of my own play, I realized how far I'd already come in my life as a playwright (by that point I had written and directed an indie film and a handful of my plays had been published and performed) and how far I still had to go. I wanted that same moment that Marsha had; the deafening roar of approval.
The odds have been against me from the beginning. I'm a male playwright committed to creating works for and about women. I don't live in New York. I've never written a musical. I didn't attend Yale, NYU, or Brown. My work is categorized (or stigmatized depending on how you look at it) as "realism" and has never been called "experimental", "avant garde", or the producer-friendly "quirky". In the world of theatre, I'm often the outsider who eats lunch alone in a cafeteria of cool kids. I like writing about real people with real problems who wear their flaws on their sleeves, right next to their fragile (but often hopeful) hearts. And in the Disney-esque world of Broadway, realism rarely wins the popular vote.
I never let the odds discourage or defeat me. I keep writing. I keep sending scripts out. To date, my plays have been performed in three languages in eight countries. I've been fortunate enough to have ten of my plays published.
Recently, my all-female play Sky Lines received a world premiere at The Producer's Club in NYC. I realize in the grand scheme of all things that are New York and theatre, I have yet to hit "the big time" here. Yet, the production of Sky Lines is monumental for me. The script was rejected by countless (male) Artistic Directors who found the script to be "too female", too "male bashing" and too "ready for Lifetime" (I actually took that response as a compliment). Yet, when producer Tony White gave the script to director Margaret Champagne (ironically enough Tony had directed Margaret in a play of mine seven years prior) she knew she had to direct it, because - as she said in her own words - "You really understand women." I can't think of a better seal of approval, or more encouraging words.
As I sat in the audience on opening night watching the brilliant work of three actors (Kasey Williams, Monica Lillian Jones, and Meridith Nicholaev) bringing my characters to life on the stage, I couldn't help but think back to my workshop with Marsha, and her career. While I haven't experienced the big life altering moment yet, I now have a different perspective on the varying degrees and levels of success.
I’m almost finished writing a new play, Mind Fields, a drama about a married Iranian man who has a gay affair with his son’s English tutor. While the script might not catapult me to a new level of fame, it's an important story worth telling. It’s a story that I must tell. And, after all, isn't that what playwriting is all about?
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DAVID-MATTHEW BARNES is the author of the young adult novel Mesmerized and the literary suspense novel Accidents Never Happen, both published by Bold Strokes Books. He wrote and directed the coming-of-age film Frozen Stars, which received worldwide distribution. His stage plays have been performed in three languages in eight countries. Recently, his all-female stage play Sky Lines received a world premiere at The Producer's Club in NYC. His literary work has appeared in over one hundred publications including The Best Stage Scenes, The Best Women's Stage Monologues, The Best Men's Stage Monologues, 60 Seconds to Shine, Young Women’s Monologues from Contemporary Plays, and the Audition Arsenal series . David-Matthew earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at Queens University of Charlotte in North Carolina. He teaches courses in English, theater and speech at Southern Crescent Technical College in Griffin, Georgia. For more info, visit .
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