The Show Must Go On

Many years ago, I wrote a sketch comedy show with my brother, John, and my pianist friend, Dale. It was always a lot of fun creating the show. John and I would write the sketches and then share the drafts with one another, and we’d make them funnier together. Then we’d bring in Dale and he’d add music and we’d rehearse the pieces and they’d change again, altered organically as they moved from the two-dimensional page to the three-dimensional stage. I was a bit surprised how much I enjoyed putting the show together. I was a writer first and an actor second, so I was used to creating things alone. As a fiction writer, I was every actor, director, lighting man, and choreographer. Yet I loved working with other people, loved watching how ideas I had had in the supreme privacy of my desk took on new shape in John and Dale’s imaginations, and I loved how their ideas inspired new ideas in me, and then my new ideas inspired ideas in them.

But plays are meant to be performed, so I had my artist friend Gorham make up some posters for us that John and I tacked up all over town. Eventually the night would come, and we three would be waiting back stage, listening to the building murmur of the arriving crowd. There was always a moment, shortly before the show began, when I would think, “What have I done?” I could feel the energy of the crowd, could feel how this night I had asked for and planned for was about to be turned over to something bigger than John, Dale, and me.

And then the curtain would rise, and we’d be in the lights, and there was the audience, the final ingredient in this creative stew. The show we rehearsed was never the show we performed. It was always different, because every crowd was different. The crowd was not aware of their role in the show, but I came to understand that the separation between actor and audience was an illusion. They finished what we had started, and every night we gave away what we had called ours, gave it to them, who gave us their attention and created something new.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual and group coaching.

Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write With Confidence. You can find William at: williamkenower.com