Application (Redacted).

fighting bullshit with radical honesty.

This week I hit “submit” on my 22nd application this season. (Perhaps you did, too?)

Many times I’ve promised myself I was done applying for stuff, that I’m too old for it, that I may as well buy a lottery ticket at Stop & Shop, that it’s less playwriting, more American Idol, that I’ve never been one for contests or gambling, that anything good I’ve ever gotten I built myself, more or less.

I went to Reno, NV once when I was 13. Somehow, my dad snuck me into a casino and I won a bunch of quarters from a slot machine. I remember being all woo-hoo! until I looked around and saw all these old, sad people in front of their slot machines. One lady had some kind of a debit card stuck into the machine, which hung on a lanyard around her neck, literally connecting her to the slot machine like an umbilical cord. I remember realizing then that gambling was sad. I don’t want my artistic career to be like that lady in Reno.

But then last year, of the 20 things I applied for, I ended up getting 2 which is technically 10%, not horrible, all things considered. So, success junkie I am, I chased the dragon again this year.

The only thing that makes applying for things year after year non-Sisaphysian is that it forces me to write my artistic philosophy out on paper. I do think that’s an important exercise. It’s why I started Theater Is Hard one year ago.

Although for years that’s not really what I was doing on applications. For years, I assumed that applying for playwriting opportunities meant meeting their bullshit with my bullshit. I viewed that as a challenge. Like when they asked:

Describe your work and creative practice and how it has brought you to this moment in time in your artistic evolution in 250 words.

I would interpret that as:

Here’s some bullshit. How well can you fling it back?

And I’d fling it back.

But after my Theater Is Hard enlightenment— and thanks to you guys— I realize it doesn’t have to be this way. Sure, it might still be a game of trickery on their part, institutional sleight of hand, a 501c3-Card Monty,¹ but I don’t have to fight fire with fire. I can fight fire with radical honesty. So my new approach is: if the odds are stacked against me anyway, I’m going to destroy with honesty.

Maybe most people are already honest in their applications and I’m only now discovering something pretty obvious. As an experiential learner, it takes me a long time to mentally upload things. No matter how many times someone tells me something, I still have to go through it, see it and feel it, to understand it. That’s why fascism and watching Friends doesn’t work on me.

I started writing Theater Is Hard because I perceived (but never actually experienced) a Law of Scarcity in the theater. Like, if I’m not a sweetie-pie, I thought, I’ll lose the opportunity before me. And with so few opportunities, I better be a fucking sweetie-pie. But I am not a sweetie-pie. I am a rageful, punk, skeptical, sometimes-funny, often-amusing, distrusting, bitter-in-a-fun-way 45 year old woman who’s had 1 C-section, 1 VBAC, dozens of tattoos and 100% silver hair as an act of fuck-you feminism who has absolutely zero time available for your fuckery. So if I lose a theater opportunity because I’m like that, well, it was never for me in the first place.

So in the spirit of transparency, I thought I would post one of my latest honest application responses. This particular application was for the famous REDACTED program at REDACTED in REDACTED CITY. It asked for a 500 word “Artistic Statement” and a 500 word “Statement of Goals” plus a full-length play. Oddly, the artistic statement prompt asked me for my goals and the goal statement prompt asked me why I need the REDACTED program and if the REDACTED program is the right next step in my career. Also, they asked what I’d write if accepted.

You may recognize some ideas included here that I’ve explored in previous Theater Is Hards. Yes, I plagiarized myself, why not, I won’t sue. I’ll link to the specific pieces when they come up, if you’re curious.

Anyway, if you don’t do it already, the brutally honest application thing is fun. Here’s what I sent verbatim. I look forward to REDACTED’s email telling me how many other people applied to REDACTED that year and that the REDACTED team encourages me to apply to REDACTED again next year and the year after that and the year after that until one of us dies first.

Enjoy.

ARTISTIC STATEMENT FOR THE REDACTED PROGRAM BY SARA FARRINGTON

My primary artistic goal as a playwright is to extract American theater out of its current era of New Escapism— a term I coined describing almost every play produced now. A New Escapism play is a 2-hour long theatrical numbing cream epi-duraled into audiences to feel comfy-cozy and not think about our violent fascist reality. New Escapism is a play safe and feel-good enough that the subscribers who hold American theater hostage won’t experience discomfort, stop payment on their check and bankrupt the theater. In New Escapism, the only two criteria for if and why a theater might be interested in a playwright is 1) How famous are they, or their parents, already? 2) Is this play safe enough to keep our old rich people calm?

My immoveable position is to give a gigantic middle finger to all of that and bring punk back to the American theater. Don’t you agree that punk needs to come back to the American theater? My #2 goal is to exorcise all celebrity from American theater. I know it feels good to see multimillionaires like Jake Gyllenhaal, Denzel Washington and John Krasinski cos-play in a country where 1st graders are murdered in their classrooms. What great escape celebrities are! But artistic cowardice like that is not permitted in my plays. I will not enable New Escapism. Don’t you agree multimillionaires cos-playing is a public ego wank intended to oppress real theater artists? My #3 goal is also to write a play that scares and challenges narratively and aesthetically to evoke catharsis. Theater was not designed by the ancient Greeks to remind audiences of how much nicer it was when Back To The Future, Death Becomes Her and Beetlejuice were out, or to pretend we don’t know that Michael Jackson was a child molester as we enjoy MJ: The Musical at $350 a ticket. Theater’s only purpose is catharsis through revelation, revolt, rebellion and speaking truth to power. Not to celebrate Neil Diamond. Don’t you agree that theater’s only purpose is catharsis through revelation, revolt, rebellion and speaking truth to power and not necessarily to celebrate Neil Diamond? My play Look Out does all this. It holds up everything I believe in about fighting New Escapism, also my anti-religion belief system, my views on sexual assault, misogyny, politics and facism, all while also being a fiercely feminist battle-cry. But more than that, Look Out is a deeply personal, autobiographical play. It is, without question, my Ur-Tale.

I know this is an intense artistic statement, possibly offensive. I suspect you will reject me for it. I get it, New Escapism is insidious, sometimes we don’t even know it’s working on us. But if there’s one punk reader on your staff, I implore you, noble rebel: fight for punk. Ask yourself if this is the American theater you want? Is this the theater you fell in love with as a kid? The theater that devastated you? Do you really like Beautiful: The Carole King Musical or would you prefer a return to Artaud, Theater of Cruelty, Brecht, Lorca, Foreman, Breuer, Wilson, Meyerhold, Surrealists, Futurists, artists who howled at the gods for change, grabbed us by the throats and tore into our souls? My play Look Out is a testament to that. We can change the American theater, we just have to achieve total bullshit-intolerance. Don’t you think we should strive toward total bullshit-intolerance?

STATEMENT OF GOALS FOR THE REDACTED PROGRAM BY SARA FARRINGTON

So ok.

My fist-pumping, middle-finger brandishing, fiery manifesto of an artistic statement above is all well and good, but nothing in the theater can be done in a vacuum (except maybe reviewing plays for show-score). I can proselytize until my throat is raw but I still need some powerful theater people to care, trust and believe in me. So here’s my existential and logical pitch.

First, existential: I do not work in academia or an artistic institution. I’m a 9-5’er at a financial entity here in New York, an org that couldn’t be further from the theater world. My colleagues not only don’t understand my playwriting practice, they view me as a head-injury victim or slow-witted child. Why Sara? they ask, oh why would you pursue anything outside of financial gain? Sure, they say, it’s ok to have hobbies— you know, like cooking, yoga, travel, yoga, travel, cooking, travel, yoga and cooking— but to dedicate your life to the theater? Are you on Broadway, Sara? Oh, you’re not? Well, then what of yours have I seen? So, kind REDACTED reader, I need REDACTED if only for a brief respite from this daily soul-crushing emptiness. Also, like all playwrights, I have a dark hole inside me that needs filling. It needs community, peers, audience, development, feedback, dramaturgy, in-kind resources, iteration, industry eyes, financing, criticism, networking, compliments, flattery and most of all, love goddammit. From what I know about the REDACTED organization, this is what you’re all about.

Second, logistical: There are two plays I want to write if accepted. The first is a transformative version of Zelda Fitzgerald’s novel Save Me The Waltz. Although it’s in the public domain next year, mine isn’t an adaptation in the traditional sense, rather my version of it. I have been eternally drawn to female artists pigeon-holed as “mad.” My last play was about the Surrealist Dora Maar and now Zelda, both brilliant female artists cast into history’s “crazy lady” ash-heap. History now accepts that although Zelda was certainly mentally ill, it was the suppression of her artistic practice that really did her in. If my artistic practice were suppressed, I’d go the same way. The other play is to somehow theatricalize my 50 journals. I started my first journal in 1990 at 10 years old and kept it going up until… last night? I’ve documented my entire life: childhood through teen years through mother’s suicide attempt through NYC life as an actor, playwright, then mom. But to adapt this sensitive, social document, I need a device, framework, meter, rules and limitations. The REDACTED program seems like a safe place to do it.

Existentially, again: As far as whether your REDACTED program is the right next step in my career, I’ll be honest: I’m 45. I’ve been in this racket professionally in NYC for 23 years. I and all playwrights know that applying for things like this is the equivalent of roulette in Vegas. It has very little to do with talent, perseverance or even luck. It’s 100% you guys, reading this, right now. So if what I’m writing here strikes your soul, you’ll go for me. If it doesn’t, you won’t. Maybe you liked the Neil Diamond musical and so I’ve already been disregarded. I don’t know. I only know that if you do go for me, then the REDACTED program becomes part of my biography. And that is huge. So is it the right next step? That’s up to you guys. But if you go for me, the REDACTED program will be forever attached to my heart, soul and memory.

The application went on to ask me:

“If you are ready to submit, hit SUBMIT. Are you ready to submit?”

Hm.

My mentor the great playwright Mac Wellman used to say, “apply to everything, but don’t say yes to everything. Otherwise, you’ll be known for nothing.”

Theater is hard. Throw your hat in the ring, but never, ever submit.

1. I won’t stop making this joke.