Strokes II

So you do your work and for weeks and weeks, don't hear a peep from a soul about it. It's like working in a vacuum. Then you hear from someone who likes something, you get a stroke.

Strokes seem to come in cycles. Got the first in a while last week and today two more ended up in my email box. Always nice to learn somebody is responding.

That's what is particularly satisfying about playwriting -- the live response of an audience. You write a good funny line of dialog and by the gods, an audience laughs at it! They applaud like hell at the end! But it can be frustrating, too -- something doesn't work, or an actor makes a mistake so something doesn't work (most of the time, actors add much more than they subtract from a script!). Playwriting permits the writer to experience live response to the work. Nothing like it.

I love watching my plays from the light booth, where I can spend as much time watching the audience as watching the play. You learn a hell of a lot doing this.