Mistakes, Mulligans, and Other Misadventures

Don't cry, Beulah Belle!

We’re in a much better place than we were a year ago. That’s cold comfort on this January night, but it is comforting nonetheless. We are not in a lockdown, we are not under a bevy of public health restrictions, we are not in the same miserable place that we were a year ago. 

That’s not to say everything is rosier now than it was 365 days ago - remember that little war that’s going on and on and on? Last year at this time it hadn’t even started yet. And I know full well that the pandemic nightmare still rages in a lot of places, mostly where, to quote Thorton Wilder “they don’t speak English, and don’t even want to.”

I know all that, and more. I know about all the bad that exists in the world, all the sadness, all the hate, all the bitterness and division that has engulfed humanity in the past few years. Don’t you ever just wish you could go back in time and change things so that none of it ever happened?

It was in such a spirit of despair that I first penned a silly little play called “App Store Time Machine” in or around 2019. It was about a young woman who downloaded an app onto her phone that she thought would send her back in time five years, but it turned out that was only available with the premium version - the free version simply brought the woman from five years ago into the present to meet her future self. Together they (her?) figured out how to survive and thrive in a MAGA-crazed new world order. 

That play didn’t age too well, obviously. And now it needs a major rewrite, because I’m planning to include it in my “Week 2” production this summer at the Library, Her Stories. Originally I was planning on calling this week of shows Mistakes, Mulligans, and Misadventures, because most of the plays in this week are ones where I want a “do-over.” They were plays that failed, or that I failed on, for whatever reason, and that produce feelings of crippling regret in me whenever I think of them. App Store Time Machine’s failure was completely beyond my control - it was supposed to happen in the summer of 2020 - but I still feel the pang of a story I wanted to tell left untold. So now the time gap is seven years, or maybe ten. I’m not sure how long I can stretch it, but I don’t think it can go much further than that. 

A few of the other plays in my week two collection did fail for reasons that were, at least partially (and ultimately) my fault. Others might not even consider them failures at all, and by a lot of measures perhaps they weren’t but still, I need to give them a second look, to see if I can give them the dignity of a production they deserve. 

I probably won’t talk as much about these plays as I do about the other ones I’m doing this year, but they are always very much on my mind.