Now is not the time

Posted August 25th, 2004 by Sean Williams

I was feeling kind of lousy until I spoke with some friends who shut me the goddam up. It’s a tough road, the one we’ve all chosen, and, y’know, it is actually a tough road. I suppose people who become doctors have their own road, their own concerns about roads less travelled and lives not lived… except that my friends who are doctors or lawyers or computer specialists don’t seem to have the same tough road thoughts.

Actually, I’m sure they do, they just don’t talk about them to casual passers-by the way I do.

The Fringe show closes this afternoon, which is the end of a journey that began last year about this time. I knew I had Lucretia, Christmas, As You Like It, Wedding, Lucretia Redux, Lady and the Ladle and then Suicide/Joke. Now the future is a little murkier. I’ve got some vacation time after my doctor friend gets married this weekend, and then I’ve got recordings and a *possible* tour. But I’m pretty wide open.

And it makes one look back on what one has accomplished in a year and wonder how it all stacks together. I had a good boiling rant going in my head that was cut off at the quick by just a few sensible comments from my producing partners. The truth is, the world around us will come to know who we are slowly and over time, we just have to continue to make the product that we know we can make. If it were cookies, we would have to have faith in the fact that we love the way they taste, they taste different than most other cookies out there, and we just have to keep making them and selling them to our friends and *believe* that some fat guy somewhere will try them, love them, and get addicted to them.

But this is not the time for ennui. If this tour happens and Gideon is a little more flush, the past few months have established all three of us in people’s minds as People You Want To Work With, and that’s got to be enough.

On a personal note, as if it’s possible to differentiate in this blog between personal and public, the people that I have had the priveledge of spending time with over the last six months are a class of people I wouldn’t trade for any other time in my life. Each show has had a lovely cast, top to bottom, each time I sit down to write something with Ian & Tessa or Mac & Jordana, every time I’m on stage with Matthew Kinney, I realize I have no right to feel anything other than enormously grateful. My life has slowly drifted from scattered spasms of talent and kindness to solid positivity and possibility, and that alone has to be considered a good thing.