Gratefully Clean

The strange thing about being a playwright is by the time a play gets into production, your life has moved forward---often by many years.

My play, A Good Smoke, opens on February 22. It is based on events that happened more than eight years ago. It also deals with addiction, mostly cigarettes, but also pills, pot and booze.

While directing this play, I found myself getting sucked in. I started to smoke things. Cigarettes even. And then very quickly, like Bugs Bunny with the huge hammer who stops himself just before he takes a wack at the nose of a bomb, I screamed, “What Am I Doing?” And quickly, I put the hammer down.

All is forgiven, of course. I can’t beat myself up for any of this. And I am grateful that my backslide to eight years ago only lasted a few days. However, I must be cautious and I must stay in present life even if past life is playing out right in front of me. A story, a play, a painting, an etching, is formed at the time it is formed. Then, it needs to be there on its own. It doesn’t need you any longer.