how a chaos muppet defines success
image from kate hamill’s instagram, march 2019; photo of the author in a production of her own pride and prejudice
did i transcribe the entire 90 minute conversation between playwright and actress kate hamill and moderator and director shelley butler at mjudson booksellers last night? sure.
and while i'll try to spare you every (delightful) minutiae of the fascinating conversation, i shall endeavor instead to share a few inspiring highlights.
hamill began her creative human career as an actress in new york city. by all definitions, she was making it. she was doing all the actor things. yet, on one auspicious evening over a couple bottles of wine with a fellow theatre-person friend, she wrote an unwise check. a hundred dollars that would mean she wouldn't have groceries for the week if, or when, her friend cashed it.
it was the check that gave herself six months to write a draft of a new play. one that would (finally) give a better role to women in the theatre. options other than only ever wife, girlfriend, or mistress. the innane, tertiary parts with little more to emote than telling the man in the play to "go do!" or "don't go do!" that brave new thing.
today, we cheer that historic (unwise, according to ms. hamill) check. the unwise decision that was kate's bet on herself to make better theatre. that same kate hamill who was the most-produced playwright of the 2019-2020 season. the woman who was named wall street journal's 2017 playwright of the year. who now has more than a dozen classic adaptations and numerous new plays to her name.
(as of today, however, we here in greenville, sc, have only gotten to see one of her plays: pride and prejudice—as staged by the warehouse theatre in 2019. oh, yeah. remember the before times? bwahaha. good thing "despair" is a part of hamill's creative process. just ask her about "clopenings" and the fate of emma in minnesota.) ; )
since that one, semi-memorable, fateful, wine-fueled night, hamill's approach to adaptations are always, as she says, "a collaboration with an author that is currently dead." and because each classic work has become a part of our culture for one reason or another, they are what shape how we think of protagonists, what a heroine should be, or what the hero's journey is. her adaptations explore what all that means to us now.
no matter how well-known the work, she uses the "new play approach." ensuring the work is accessible for people with no prior knowledge of the source material, but also balancing expectations—making the work satisfying for those who know the work (possibly inside-out) ahead of time.
when she writes a new play, she can do whatever she wants. but when she writes an adaptation, people often come in with passion in a different way; they come with an attached energy to it. but through her process, hamill will only include what's dramaturgically interesting. forever creatively rebelling (as she should) against being a literalist.
in that first adaptation, her version of jane austen's sense and sensibility, the one we thank that historically unwise check for, hamill is able to point out how the dashwood sisters and their recently-widowed mother are not just poor and vulnerable, but how they're punished for both following and breaking the rules. missing from austen’s work is the greek chorus of gossips hamill created to get the audience sucked in to the drama—the chorus propels the audience through the plot, and gets the audience involved in the very theme of the play itself. before they’re even aware of it, the audience is culpable, too: equally guilty in the judgmental gossip enveloping the dashwood women.
hamill's adaptations work in conversation with the text. not beholden to it. she might pick what parts of the original piece go in, but otherwise she's just writing. enough writing so that by the time the play is in rehearsal, she won't bring in the original source material or dare to quote it.
she just BUILDS THE THING that's there. the NEW original. asking the actors to lay aside everything they know of any other version of the characters they may have seen in previous incarnations. because working with only with what is THERE is what will reveal new ways the character can be.
the living, breathing characters on stage that make theatre what it is: a LIVE ART.
one that speaks to the here and now.
one of the few places where one can create new, surprising things.
works that open minds.
works that open doors and let all the people in—because no moment, no form of theatre, is a museum piece.
it's a living organism.
as a fan of theatre (yes, i sure did doodle a new "theatre nerd" logo/tattoo idea in the margins of my notebook last night), and as a huge re-telling fanatic (forever obsessed with comparing and contrasting original tales to their pop culture manifestations), you know i'm not going to miss hamill's newest adaptation, the scarlet letter.
next month, the south carolina new play festival will premiere a staged reading of hamill's the scarlet letter (directed by last night's moderator, shelley butler.)
whether or not nathaniel hawthorne's work was required reading during your high school experience, the scarlet letter maintains its place as a distinctly american piece of literature. the book reveals the puritans' misogyny, and their fear-of-the-other—two of their traits that remain hard-baked into american society and culture today. (perhaps proof of its own innate puritanical-ness? the fact that the novel doesn't even deal with sexuality when at its heart it's literally a story about sexual indiscretion.)
hamill's the scarlet letter promises not just to explore culturally-specific illnesses (huzzah for rabbit trail research only sometimes disguised as procrastination!), but as hamill's own adaptation process calls for, it shall ask one thematic question. this time:
what do you do when you've done something so bad that you fear you can never be forgiven?
the puritans came to the new world to establish their own religious and economic utopia. but disease often walked before them. they might enter a village and find nothing but dead and decaying bodies. they themselves had brought this death to the new world. how could they forgive themselves for that? was absolution even possible?
we at least know that they believed in punishment.
so forgiveness becomes the question for every character in hamill's play. and not just for the men, those enthusiastically pointing fingers at the scarlet letter-wearing hester prynne. but also for the women. women like governor bellingham's wife, who although she’s scarcely mentioned in hawthorne’s novel, here is given a full role. herself perpetuating that same misogyny as she wrestles with her own fear of the original sin within herself. and she punishes hester for it.
cardamom honey latte in hand, scribbling notes furiously in my bullet journal, my view (with 40+ other fans behind me), listening to shelley (left) and kate (right) last night at mjudson—the inaugural event of the south carolina new play festival 2022.
hamill had so much more to say last night about her playwriting process, keeping distance from the work until it's going up, wrestling with perfectionism, throwing spaghetti at all the walls, critics (experiencing polar opposite reviews at the same performance, nonetheless), of not chasing the zeitgeist, her self-awareness as a "chaos muppet" and what roles she knows her energy is best for, and compartmentalizing the actor and the playwright within (particularly when dealing with directors).
but here is what i'm going to take away.
and what i want you perhaps to remember, too.
when asked how one measures success in a creative industry—where we're not supposed to focus on things we can't control (awards, applause, venues, those cheek-pinching critics, etc.)—how does she define success for herself?
(yeah, that question was from me. look at me being all brave in front of famous people!)
her answer was three-fold. and an aspirational mantra for us all:
i have to work on something that stirs my soul.
i have to create a safe space for the whole creative, collaborating team.
i have to do something that scares the hell out of me.
sure, we might do the creative work partially for the feedback (even if we can't take that too seriously), but instead, let's open wide the gates.
throw open the theatre doors.
break through our own encircling comfort zones.
because maybe it's your turn to write that unwise check.
to pursue that “unwise” decision.
to make new art.
not just for you—chaos muppet or otherwise.
but for those holding their applause until they're there to hear it.
to see it.
to experience your successes by being a part of it, too.
links:
south carolina new play festival
my local independent bookstore where the event was held: mjudson booksellers
and me? while not a playwright or actress (#NotYetAnyway), i am writing a book about (& for) theatre kids. you can learn more about me on my website (halthegal.art; you’re on its blog right now); follow my bookish, coffee-fueled adventures on my instagram (@halthegal_storyart); & support me on my author-illustrator patreon (the crayon box.)
happy creating!!
xo,
*hallie :)