My last entry concerning my play, Woman on the Scarlet Beast (Blog 5/15/14) ended with my description of how I leapt from my chair when the Executive Director of Post5 Theatre invited me to meet him. Arriving at the designated location, I was greeted by a tall, golden-haired young man with blue eyes and chiseled features. ” Eat your heart out,” George Clooney, I thought, looking at him.
We shook hands and sat down to discuss my play: its theme, source of the idea, number of characters and so forth. I told him the story was based on the lives of real people, principally, a grandmother, mother and daughter, each of whom was desperate to be loved.
The person opposite me was young enough to be my grandson, yet I felt a rapport with him. The film, Somewhere in Time flickered through my thoughts. Was it possible that we had met in some other life? When I recalled how carelessly I’d dialed the theater’s number, expecting nothing and discovering I was talking to someone who could help, I couldn’t decided if I was experiencing a moment of pure, dumb luck or if fate’s hand had guided me.
During the interview, my companion listened to what I had to say without interruption. Naturally, I was gratified. But when he asked to read my play as we said our goodbyes, I was so elated that when buffeted by a gust of wind as I stepped from the theater, I imagined I was flying. Such was my irrational exuberance.
By the time I got home, however, my natural pessimism had kicked in. Woman on the Scarlet Beast was a play set in the 1960s. The young man I had just talked with had been born 25 years later. How could he embrace a time he didn’t know or a subject which focused on women?
I began to think I was a fool to hope. Yet even while I cursed my folly another voice urged me forward. Why, it asked, did I always play the villain to my aspirations? Had I not failed many times before and lived? What did I fear? I had nothing to lose but opportunity.
Though it was the weaker voice, I heeded the second. Hitting the send button, I flushed my play into the void and prepared to wait.
(Courtesy of www.english-online.at)
