The Tempest in a Teapot

tyunglebower ♦ October 18, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

I can write two books at once, and have done. The caveat is that one has to be fiction, the other non-fiction. They occupy parts of my mind distinct enough from one another to cause no issues.

Outside of this arrangement, I won’t write more than one book at a time. One will inevitably suffer if I write say two novels at once–the required commitment is diluted.

Even if I go a month without working on a novel, I am committed to it so long as I do not move to a different story. If I started a new story every time the notion of one occurred to me, I would simply never finish anything. Discipline!

For my occasional non-fiction, it is the same.

I also avoid double-ups in my theatre life. A play is not as constant or for as much time as writing a novel. But arguably it requires a tighter, more intense focus on any given day or week than the writing of a novel does.

And it happens on someone else’s deadlines.

Not to mention what one owes the rest of a cast and crew.

No. I very much don’t screw around with plays. I am in or I am out. No half-assing it.

To be in two plays as once has happened once before in my life…until now.

As I am in rehearsals for Arthur Miller’s A View from a Bridge, as Alfieri, I have been cast in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, as Sebastian.

(Those who follow me regularly will note that my current novel, The Rubble and The Shakespeare happens to tell the tale of a group of people attempting to perform this very play. )

Which means there will be some overlap in rehearsals. This is mitigated to a certain degree because both plays are at the same venue. Had the second play been elsewhere, I doubt I would have auditioned for it.

For me, this is not best practice under normal circumstances.

But it wasn’t normal circumstances. Shakespeare is so infrequent on the community stage, especially in my area, I grab the chance to perform it when I can. I doubt there would be any other playwright that would encourage me to double in this way.

It will require greater focus, dedication, and an appreciation of the process of storytelling than being in a single production requires. Handled poorly could invite a certain irony–the art would diminish the creativity through sheer volume.

I am determined to avoid this, of course. If anything, I want to use this temporary double-up to encourage enhanced mindfulness while rehearsing one over the other. The now, and the moment of the creative act must be priority, both on the Miller days and the Shakespeare days, until the former is concluded and I can throw myself totally into the latter.

This is not something I want to do often. But as I am in it, the deliberation and thought for process can attain a rare depth, if I am motivated to make it so.

And I am.