NYC PRODUCTION, 2007: NY AND RESPECT FOR THE PLAYWRIGHT
by Linda Evans

Forget your parents. Forget your friends, even your best friends. Do they admire your writing? They don’t need to. That’s not their job. The one best place on earth that I’ve found for respect is our own New York, New York. The best zip code for a playwright is 10036, within a block or two of the Big Apple’s Times Square.

Let’s face it. The heat from the lights causes some chemically-induced stupor.
Somehow, a magic carpet drifts between the gutter grates in front of the gargantuan McDonald’s on 42nd Street and lifts you to that first audition. There your eager director, who thinks you are smarter than he is, greets you with a handshake/hug! Is this sounding familiar so far?

Jokes aside, I fell in love with New York when I saw the faces of my director and the actors who had been studying my play for a month. In those first few moments the words had flesh and a heartbeat from a Midwestern town. Respect! You can’t buy it. You can’t demand it. Perhaps in this catch-phrase society it only lasts as long as a 30-second commercial. But respect for the playwright in New York is true. It’s real. And there is nothing quite like it.

The First Best Audience for the playwright is the director. He or she will be attracted to your words and then spend the rest of the time wondering how he/she could be in love with your brain but not necessarily the rest of you! The director will be outspoken and confrontational but always flirtatious, because ultimately the director wants to be liked by you! Behind a near face-off, there will be a grin, a drink or an exchange of stories. Enjoy the director; he/she has put aside writing and other projects to entertain the thought that you may be the next bright light on Broadway. We all enjoy a fantasy!
The next Best Audience are the actors. I love actors because I cannot do what they do. When the male actors began arguing about Lipstick with me at Ensemble Studio Theatre, LA, I knew I had something: a germ, something infectious, annoying. The men who played the character of Blake, the father, MY FATHER, in the play wouldn’t let it go. . .i.e., wouldn’t let me go. They pinned me in the hallways. They followed me with their eight page letters and phone calls to my peaceful home in Tucson, Arizona. (I don’t remember leaving them my address!). Oh, actors!

My conclusion about these bold male actors is that they had acquired extra testosterone from the Los Angeles sun. Angst from leaving their beloved New York along with sun exposure had made them opinionated! Bless them all. It was these few bold men who took Lipstick away from me. They thought THEY were the character Blake, the father, MY FATHER!

The play belongs to the writer until it’s exposed. When Lipstick hit New York, New York, the actor artists were respectful and engaged, yanking out the characters through the soles of their feet through their toes honed by years of study. Some of these actors were directors themselves and had their own production companies. The raw smack down of the fist-to-cuffs displaced LA actors was not there. Had we lost something?
Unschooled in drama, I heard the words “Shaw and Chekhov” tossed about by the director and actors like candy bars—only they were attributing those iconic spirits to me, my words, my play, Lipstick. Had we mislabeled something?

There is nothing like getting respect in New York, New York--, even if it’s just for one Side Salad moment. Take that magic carpet ride in front of McDonalds on 42nd St. It’s a short ride, and you will fall off in no time. But the fall doesn’t hurt much, buffered by the gaze of that first best audience, your new family of NY directors and actors! Thank you!

LIPSTICK ON A PIG played at the Samuel Beckett Theatre on 42nd St. in May, 2007 for 25 performances, as an Equity production. LIPSTICK was developed at Ensemble Studio Theatre, LA Project; Act II was further developed when I was a playwright-in-residence at Ensemble Studio Theatre, NY, NY.