Is 9M Theatre still running or not? I guess so.
I don't really know what to do with a theatre company that is essentially me, but is deeply scarred... I guess also like me.
When I started 9M Theatre in 2016 all I wanted to do was put on a Shakespeare play with my friends. What followed was about 3 years of joyous chaos, followed by a pandemic. And in the middle of all of that (in the worst kept secret of last year's Hamilton Fringe Festival) something really terrible happened to me. And I pretended it didn't. I just kept making theatre and pretending everything was fine. Which, to be clear, was insane behaviour (and not in a playful gnome-making way, but in a DSM V mental illness kind of way).
And now 9M is forever entwined with a period of my life that is both wonderful and horrible. I have posters for plays hanging in my room, gifts from my casts with signatures on them and a website and social media account full of pictures... and I don't want to look at any of them. And it kills me. It hurts so much to have so much of that incredible ride marred by this horrible mess that I can't *really* talk about. I can talk around it. I can write a play about trying to heal from it. But in a lot of ways, it's hard to look back on my "9M era".
It's not that I wanted to "let" anyone take my theatre company away from me. But people don't really understand. None of us understand what each other is going through, and we are all carrying something to be sure. I just don't know if I can explain to anyone just how hard it is to carry on with an artistic mission that will always be so strongly associated with the worst thing that ever happened to me. Never mind that I have to do safety planning before I go to (or hold) auditions. Or that Fringe last summer I was basically in a fugue state for 11 days. Or that I have "theatre buddies" I call on to go to shows with me so that I feel safe being there.
I never wanted to stop doing theatre. It's just so hard right now. And it might be hard for a long time.
There's a lot of talk right now about making theatre a "safe space", and I'll admit that that cuts at me at times. I do not feel safe in this theatre community and I might never feel that way again. There are people I feel safe with, and people who have helped to make spaces safer- but ultimately, if I want to keep doing this weird, dying art that I love, I'm just going to have to have the courage to be unsafe and uncomfortable. And what does that mean for a company that I can largely will in and out of existence? I guess I still don't know. But I do know that, whatever happens, I'll keep trying to create things people want to see, have some fun with Shakespeare and make people laugh.
And f&$# him if he can't take a joke.
I don't really know what to do with a theatre company that is essentially me, but is deeply scarred... I guess also like me.
When I started 9M Theatre in 2016 all I wanted to do was put on a Shakespeare play with my friends. What followed was about 3 years of joyous chaos, followed by a pandemic. And in the middle of all of that (in the worst kept secret of last year's Hamilton Fringe Festival) something really terrible happened to me. And I pretended it didn't. I just kept making theatre and pretending everything was fine. Which, to be clear, was insane behaviour (and not in a playful gnome-making way, but in a DSM V mental illness kind of way).
And now 9M is forever entwined with a period of my life that is both wonderful and horrible. I have posters for plays hanging in my room, gifts from my casts with signatures on them and a website and social media account full of pictures... and I don't want to look at any of them. And it kills me. It hurts so much to have so much of that incredible ride marred by this horrible mess that I can't *really* talk about. I can talk around it. I can write a play about trying to heal from it. But in a lot of ways, it's hard to look back on my "9M era".
It's not that I wanted to "let" anyone take my theatre company away from me. But people don't really understand. None of us understand what each other is going through, and we are all carrying something to be sure. I just don't know if I can explain to anyone just how hard it is to carry on with an artistic mission that will always be so strongly associated with the worst thing that ever happened to me. Never mind that I have to do safety planning before I go to (or hold) auditions. Or that Fringe last summer I was basically in a fugue state for 11 days. Or that I have "theatre buddies" I call on to go to shows with me so that I feel safe being there.
I never wanted to stop doing theatre. It's just so hard right now. And it might be hard for a long time.
There's a lot of talk right now about making theatre a "safe space", and I'll admit that that cuts at me at times. I do not feel safe in this theatre community and I might never feel that way again. There are people I feel safe with, and people who have helped to make spaces safer- but ultimately, if I want to keep doing this weird, dying art that I love, I'm just going to have to have the courage to be unsafe and uncomfortable. And what does that mean for a company that I can largely will in and out of existence? I guess I still don't know. But I do know that, whatever happens, I'll keep trying to create things people want to see, have some fun with Shakespeare and make people laugh.
And f&$# him if he can't take a joke.