After careful consideration, and many thanks to the commentaries offered, I took the time to look once more at the prompts and realized I didn't fully answer either of the two I kinda-sorta addressed. Here's round two. I like it more. Also included are the prompts, cause that's rather useful.
1. Tell us about the moment that you knew you were a dramatist and what unique contribution you knew you could make to both your community and the theatre community.
AND/OR
2. What would your participation in DG’s national conference mean to you as a dramatist? How would it take you to another level in your craft and/or career?
AND/OR
3. What is the role of the dramatist in the community? What responsibility does a dramatist have? What responsibility does the community have towards a dramatist?
It was in a particularly tumultuous time in my life that I discovered playwriting. Pretty cliché, I know, but it is also true. I never set out to write a script. I was writing a conversation, but that was part of writing novels, too, and I never thought much about it during the process. What was different was that I was only writing the conversation. I had some rather undeclared scene changes that occurred as the moments within my life during that time moved from one issue to the next, but the conversation would return like old friends catching up. Everything I wanted to say, setting and so forth, was spoken of in the conversation. I didn't use any stage direction at all. Why would I, at that point? I was trying to purge the moments. Trying to understand the moments. Trying to forgive the moments. Toward the end of that period, my affections shifted from pain to hope, and I decided to end the conversation. And I mean end it. Not stop it and never think about it again, but actually end it. And I did. I remember realizing as I ended it; flipping through the pages and pages of dialogue, that that was all it was. Dialogue. I realized all of my terrible attempts at fiction mostly moved through dialogue. And this? This was so much better. Gone was my prosaic and uninspired prose. In its place were thirty pages of verse dialogue, and I knew in the core of my being I would have to try and do that again on purpose.
Fifteen years ago, I would have looked at you askance if you told me I was going to be a Modern Verse Dramatist. My first few plays were entirely self-serving as I continued writing in the vein of my accidental script. Eventually, though, I realized I wanted more from the work than the vanity that had driven me thus far. Like my life, my narratives turned from pain to hope, and from me to the greater world. Tragedy may be a cornerstone of my characters' past, but it also a beginning. When I write about rape, it is about the survivor, and not about the act. When I write about attempted suicide, it is not about what lead them there, but what leads them out. And as much as I write stories about love, I write how they begin; happily ever after is up to you.
Fifteen years later, I have a collection of 10 plays (8 full length, 1 one act, 1 ten-minute) that I know are ready for the stage, with another in progress. I have another 5 that are my first attempts, horrible as they are, and I still cherish them as the stepping stones that allowed me to develop the form and style I devote myself to. But, the time for looking back has ended, and now the stage calls. The time has come to move my works from the page to the stage, and I'm hoping that the Dramatists Guild Conference will help me open that curtain.
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