My cynical, but honestly appreciative of your effort, RSVP to your theater invitation this season

Tis another season of social media posts about show openings.  So much of my feed (and probably yours too) is littered with invitations and shared posters or candids of a scene, captioned with “We open this Friday” or “Come see my next project” or “This show is truly special.”  Or some variation on that theme.

I scan through these posts and wish for something different.  Maybe the honest trailer version that would disclaim the realities we all know are behind these invitations like:

- It’s tech Sunday, so I really should tell everyone about this show.  Even though it’s tech Sunday and we’re freaking out about how it is all going to come together.  But it was a long day and my headache is pounding and I am so tired, but please come see it so I feel like this was all worth it, especially on what was supposed to be my holiday weekend.

- Please come see this show.  We paid a lot for the royalties.  The set went over budget and we need to sell so many tickets to break even and pay for the heat.  Maybe if we call it a fundraiser, you won’t notice how we increased our ticket prices.  Here’s a gift basket raffle and a bottle of water for $2.

- You have to see this!  No one has said It’s a wonderful life or God bless us everyone or You’ll shoot your eye out the way we will on opening night or our second matinee of the weekend.  No one before and certainly not the other fifteen theaters doing some variation of the same show at the same time.

- Come see this instead.  We aren’t doing the same holiday show that every other theater is doing.  Instead, see this musical with a thousand children or no children.  Because we are too cool for the holidays.   And it is a musical, so you won’t mind paying more for your ticket. 

- We haven’t seen each other in so long, so come watch me on the stage.  Even though I haven’t been able to accept your invitations to get together for several months because I go from one project to the next and always have a rehearsal or performance as a conflict.  But, yeah, come see me and maybe we can chat for two minutes after the show.  Or, if you want to join us for a greasy meal after, you can sit in on our conversation full of inside jokes and theater trivia and gossip.  It will be great to see you.  Especially if you tell me how great the show is!

- Come see this show and maybe I’ll come see your show.  If I’m not in rehearsal or performance that night.  Or it is too far.  Or maybe you can produce this next show we’re doing.

Okay, this is definitely cynical.  I say this with as much love as snark.  I mean... really, you get it.  I hope you do.  I have a great appreciation for all the work and passion that has gone into this heavy production season.  I hope that everyone who sent me an invite in the last week or two or has shared an image of their rehearsal process is having a joyous, merry theatrical experience.  How better to spend the holiday season than with your artistic kindred?  Singing or creating or telling a story to bring some light into a gloomy world.

I hope you all have happy, full houses.  That the hiccups of a tech week dissolve with the lights up in front of an audience and their laughter and applause.  I hope the profits fill your oil tanks and enable another great season in 2019.

I have immense appreciation for the crew who are there earlier to clean and warm the theater and stay to shut off the lights and go out in the cold.  The ones who count the money to pay the bills and breathe a sigh of relief. 

Here’s my honesty.   I very much value your choice to create something in a season of consumption.  To tell stories that may give us opportunity to see clearly the meaning of the season.  To create a memory or tradition with others who may want to sit in the audience. But I am sitting this season out.  I am burned out.  I have neglected writing and the other creative projects in my brain.  I want to revisit with all of you whose invitations I have turned down because I had rehearsal or a show.  Friendships that are more than returning favors to sit in the audience.  Conversations that contemplate the mysteries of the universe and not just dish on this person’s performance or turns every other phrase into a dirty joke.  And this, most time consuming and significant of all, I will focus on finding and making a new home.  Where I hope to host those conversations and maybe… eventually… return to the parts of theater I love.  Reading a good script and discussing how it contemplates the mysteries of the universe.  Sharing the things we love about theater and making the art great.

Until then, may your theater season be merry and bright and full of applause.  I’ll see you in a new year, when I will probably rejoin the chorus of "Come see my show. It will be great, unlike anything you've ever seen."