Mullis: The difference between the page and the stage

I’ve been lucky as a playwright. I’ve seen my work performed several times. Knowing my work will be performed is thrilling. Watching it be performed is terrifying.

I’m rarely a part of what happens between finishing a script and seeing a production. When the house lights go down opening night, I’m hearing the play for the first time. And hearing isn’t the same as reading.

Sometimes a piece of dialogue makes me cringe. Sometimes an actor trips over a line, delivering it like a box of broken glass. Sometimes a director wrings something out of a situation I didn’t know was there, but I wish was.

Either way, I come out of the theater wishing for a time machine and a red pen.

This year I had a short play in the Theatre Kalamazoo’s New Playfest. Right away, things were different. They wanted the playwrights at every rehearsal. The actors were to keep their scripts in hand, even during the performance. Rewriting was encouraged. Memorizing was discouraged. The idea was to develop the script.

I nodded my head, but I didn’t get it.

Rehearsals went well. My director understood the point of the play and did a great job choreographing actions to my words. The actors were creative and hardworking. I loved watching the story come alive.

Mostly.

I didn’t like seeing the scripts. I wanted to see the show. Besides, carrying the scripts didn’t stop the actors from flubbing, skipping or paraphrasing lines. Every missed syllable needled me, but I kept my mouth shut for the same reason I sometimes keep my mouth shut while raising my teenagers. They were going in the right direction. Why discourage them with nitpicking?

Two weeks before the opening night, all the plays rehearsed together in the theater. Before we began, the producers addressed the group. One of them said playwrights were the “gods of the theater”.

I bit back a smile. I have more rejection letters and uncomfortable theater moments than I care to recall. I was not a god of the theater.

This same producer, after watching my play, came up to me frowning. He had a copy of my script in hand and wanted to know if it was the most current version.

I nodded my head.

He told me I needed to work with my director and get our actors on script. They were paraphrasing too much and the story was getting lost. The point of this festival was not to come out of the theater wishing for a time machine and a red pen.

The time for the red pen was right now.

The actors needed to deliver the lines as written so I knew which ones to cut. And since this production was about the writing, I couldn’t be a silent cheerleader. I had to be, well, a god.

Not the kind of god that gets all the glory, but the kind who delivers folks to the other side.

I went home and took a razor to my script. I went to the next rehearsal with fresh copies and a critical eye. They rehearsed and I read. We talked. We made changes. We tried again.

When the house lights went down on opening night, I was nervous, but not terrified.

After all, I’d heard it all before.

Nicole L.V. Mullis is the author of “A Teacher Named Faith”. You can reach her at nlvm.columns@gmail.com or www.NicoleLVMullis.com.