Go figure

I've always been puzzled why my play Who Forgives? bombed here. It wasn't new material to be tested, after all -- it had premiered in Cork, Ireland, and went on to be a finalist for an annual new drama award. It did well in Ireland, both popular and critically praised. The Irish director suggested that one reason it did well was that it raised an issue very much on the Irish mind, pedophilia, but in a "foreign" American context divorced from the Catholic Church. The few people here who told me they admired the play were fans who tend to like anything I do. It was a decent production here, Stark Raving Theatre liked it enough to produce it, so what was the problem? I have no idea. Fortunately the success in Ireland meant more to me than  the failure here.

But it shows you what a crap shoot "success" in the arts is. You have to learn, in this reality, to take success as well as failure with a grain of salt, find and stick by your own standards and principles, and do your work without losing sleep about what audiences may or may not like. The Salinger quotation at the bottom of this blog is right on.