My Time in the Room: ERASERS
It’s impossible to overstate the gift of time in a room with talented collaborators.
About a year ago, Gabrielle Randle-Bent, from Chicago’s Court Theatre, contacted me and said “Hey, we have this new, low-key residency where we bring back University of Chicago-affiliated artists. If you came…what would you want to do?” This kick-started a year of dreaming and scheming about where my current obsessions and the UChicago community’s challenges might be in alignment.
I proposed and discarded a half-dozen ideas, until I said: “You know what’s really on my mind? Censorship.” And Gabby said: “That. Write THAT.” We talked about the Chicago Statement, about the twists and turns of protests on campuses around the country, about the ways that I, as an artist, have felt the need to self-censor.
Eventually, I said “If I write this, it has to be a comedy. Because the darker the subject, the more it needs humor.” I revisited Ionesco and Vaclav Havel, watched a lot of The Office, and spent time reading speeches and articles by a variety of political philosophers.
I careened into town with a bunch-of-pages-that-might-or-might-not-be-in-a-play, tentatively titled UNTITLED CENSORSHIP COMEDY, and was lucky enough to walk into a room with the insanely brilliant and hilarious director Jessica Fisch, three talented and game actors (Eric Hellman! Sarah Coakley Price! Mo Shipley!) and a lovely SM with a “why not” approach (Kate Nagorski). Stayed sequestered in Hyde Park. Survived on caffeine and croissants (thanks, Medici Bakery). Barely slept all week. No —really – I haven’t slept that little since I was an undergraduate. Workshopped and wrote and cut characters and filled white boards and created “murder boards” of post-it notes. Met brilliant Chicago professors whose work touches on my play’s themes, thinking about how UChicago might be of use to the project—and how my project might be of use to the University community. I brought in a new version of the script every day, and every day, Jessica and the team jumped up, high-fived, and helped me discover what worked (and what definitely didn’t).
Along the way I discovered that my play is—yes—about censorship, but it’s also about the creep of fascism, about the absurdity of ordinary people trying to get through the day, twisted into pretzels by political changes they’re trying desperately to ignore. And I developed an unhealthy obsession with office supplies.
This play still has miles to go, but I left Hyde Park with the full draft of a play I’m now calling “ERASERS: A CENSORSHIP COMEDY”—a play I never would have dared write, I think, if it hadn’t been for Gabby’s wide-open invitation, and Court’s radical hospitality.
Thank you, Gabby and Tyler. Thank you, Heidi, Angel, and Court.