I wrote this for my application to an MFA program in Playwriting. Waiting to hear back. Wish me luck.
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Recently, at my old job, I was talking to a student I had never met before. He was in school for acting and I shared that I had studied playwriting. Usually I pepper students with questions about their lives, but this time the student asked me something. “Who inspires you as a playwright?” he said. I became very quiet, turned bright red… and eventually mumbled something about Tennessee Williams or perhaps Arthur Miller. The conversation was over; a twenty-year-old had caught me in the act. I was a complete fraud.
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I worked for two and a half years as an “engagement professional” in the Jewish community on a college campus. What does that mean? The job was not, as one might imagine, about encouraging marriage, but was rather about getting to know Jewish-identified college students who were uninvolved in Jewish life on campus, and connecting them to opportunities, programs, and resources. (That is the official answer, anyway. The unofficial answer is that I treated a lot of students to coffee or tea.)
Sometimes, when I met students who were uninvolved in Jewish life, they would blanche when I mentioned where I worked. “Oh,” they would say, “I’m a bad Jew.” This could mean a lot of different things. It meant growing up totally secular, or could also mean growing up somewhat involved in Jewish life and then ceasing all Jewish activities upon entering college. It meant knowing about Shabbat—the Jewish Sabbath—and Jewish holidays, but not observing any of it. It could also mean not really knowing anything about Shabbat or holidays. Mostly, though, it meant a sense of being “checked out” of one’s Jewish identity—whether it was through ignorance or guilt or indifference or shame.
“There’s no such thing as a bad Jew!” I would exclaim. They rarely believed me. An enthusiastic Jewish professional cannot undo, in one fell swoop, years of self-incrimination.
Only recently have I realized that I have been doing the exact same thing as these particular students. In college, the distinction between “studying playwriting” and “being a playwright” was an important one that I availed myself of often; it was just too hard to introduce myself as a playwright with a straight face. Since graduation and during the occasional, terrible moments of interacting with people who actually are knowledgeable of theater and playwrights, I soon confess: I’m a bad playwright.
I’m a bad playwright because I don’t go to enough theater, because I don’t have Theater History 101 down pat, because I don’t read enough plays. I don’t have a substantial body of work. I have only had one proper production—and that was five years ago, at my undergraduate college. My joke at the time was that it was either my grand debut or my grand finale as a playwright. Until recently, the latter bore true.
Thank goodness for my last job, which saved me in so many ways that I am still unraveling and understanding. The response to someone who considers themselves a bad playwright or a bad Jew is, surprisingly, the same:
Own your identity. Own your background and your voice. Is your background less formal, less experienced? Own it. Do you have doubts and insecurities? Own them, too. The questions are part of who you are. Is the path ahead of you long? Great. Don’t be scared. Go for it. Learn, and grow.
This is why I am applying for an MFA in Playwriting. This is my voice. This is the person I want to fully be. I cannot imagine learning and growing anywhere else.