On Ghosting.

A hypothetical morality tale for the ghosted artist.

I’ve written about artistic ghosting here at Theater Is Hard in the past. You might remember last year when guest Betazoid Lt. Commander Deanna Troi of the Starship Enterprise gave her thoughts on the phenomenon of ghosting in her Is No Response A Response?

But it’s been a while since I tackled ghosting head on and I have some new ideas about it.

A refresher on ghosting (not that you need it):

Ghosting is when one party abruptly ends all communication with another, typically with little or no explanation.

People usually think of dating when they think of ghosting.

Ghosting is pretty much expected in contemporary dating. I mean, I’ve heard it’s pretty much expected. But I haven’t dated in several decades. When I dated, it was in the beforetimes when there were no cell phones with which to ghost upon. I had old-school ghosting, which I would argue was much worse than new-school ghosting.

For example:

In college, I was feverishly, relentlessly, irrationally in love with this guy named Bradley (obviously that’s not his real name).

One time, Bradley offered to pick me up for a late night hang. Earlier that day, he said he’d swing by the side entrance to my dorm building at 10PM, we’d pick up some booze with his fake ID and then get crazy.

Ready to go, I waited at the agreed upon door at the agreed upon time.

And waited. And waited. And waited.

Maybe… he was running late? Maybe he left me a voicemail!

I jetted up the four flights of stairs to my dorm room and checked my landline voicemail.

Nothing.

I jetted back down— what if he arrived in that instant I left to check my voicemail?! That would so be my luck!

But nope, no Bradley.

After several hours, I gave up and went to bed.

I guess that was just a temporary ghosting because we continued to hook up intermittently over the years and I know I never gave him greif over standing me up that night. I know, I know, but I had a very tenuous hold on this gorgeous asshole and also I was only about 20. I had years of feminism to catch up on.

Ghosting a friend is much more complicated.

In my experience, suddenly exiting a friendship comes after a long period of putting up with awful shit, followed by a realization of who this person really is and how they consistently make you feel. This kind of reckoning can be handled in many ways, but I wouldn’t fault someone for ghosting the toxic party as a way to protect one’s mental health or even as a means of survival. I have been on both the giving and receiving ends of friendship-ghosting, as I’m sure you have, too. And for some toxic relationships, like with a narcissist, abuser or addict, suddenly going no-contact can be the only answer, sometimes even life or death.

But artistic ghosting is different.

Arguably, being ghosted artistically hurts more. Whereas I can guess at why Bradley stood me up that night in college— as mentioned, he was gorgeous, well aware of it, hilariously horny and easily distracted by shiny things— so no mystery there. Friendship ghosting, if people are being honest, can typically be unpacked, anatomized and, eventually gotten to the bottom of by everyone involved.

But artistic ghosting? I usually have no idea why that happens.

Because I already detailed my own recent case of industry ghosting via Deanna Troi last year, let’s not talk about me.

Let’s imagine a fictional female playwright going through a fictional artistic ghosting scenario. Let’s name her… Hypa Thetical. I assure you, Hypa is not me— I only wish. Nothing here happened, I made it all up.

Here’s Hypa’s story:

Hypa’s playwriting star is finally rising. She can feel it— everyone can. After years of hard work, investment and luck, regional theaters are finally poking around. Hypa’s also getting acceptance emails— the kind that make no mention of how many others applied. Theater is still hard for her, of course. The National Playwrights Conference at The O’Neill Center remains immoveable. But so does The Lambert Glacier in Antarctica— until it inevitably calves. With her recent success, Hypa remains hopeful that the NPC, arctic ice shelf that it is, will one day calve in her direction.

One rainy Saturday, Hypa sits at her kitchen table in her studio apartment in Astoria, Queens making a real dent in her new play called, Lurching Toward Infinity (working title). When suddenly—-

PING!

Although she typically ignores emails once she hits a flow state, dopemine fiend that she is, she looks at her phone.

It’s an email from Dick Salary, the artistic director at a major theater in the big city.

Yanked out of her right brain vacation, Hypa smashes open her gmail.

Holy fuck. Dick Salary is interested in producing Hypa’s play, Plunging Toward Forever, the prequel to Lurching Toward Infinity.

Hypa knows that in Trump’s Brave New America, a playwright receiving this kind of email is almost unheard of. Government funding is long gone and private funding depends upon the milquetoastiness of the plays programmed, which TV celebrity is involved and/or how famous their parents are. So Hypa being courted by an AD like Dick Salary is literally Major League Baseball rare.

MLB stats flash through Hypa’s mind for some reason: about 500,000 kids play high school baseball each year. Around 7% of them make it to NCAA baseball. And only about 0.02%—roughly 1 in 5,000—make it to the MLB, where fewer than 800 players are active at any given season. So, statistically, the percentage of baseball players who end up in the MLB is zero. Hypa doesn’t know the stats for playwrights, and she’s not gonna guess, but considering there are over 10,000 playwright users on New Play Exchange and only 82 LORT theaters in Trump’s America, Hypa has beat the odds.

Hypa, not wanting to sound too eager to Dick Salary, paces her studio apartment for 44 minutes exactly. Hypa feels that’s the precise amount of response time to indicate a full and interesting life.

She types Dick Salary a professional, enthusiastic, but cool: “Yes, I’m very interested.”

She deletes it.

She types it again: “Yes! I’m very interested!”

(You see, Hypa was raised in the 80s and 90s when women were conditioned to smile over email.)

Over the next two weeks, exciting emails are exchanged, plans come together, meetings are discussed and anticipated, premiere dates are bandied about.

But then suddenly, without warning, all communications from Dick Salary cease.

Well, thinks Hypa, it’s late August. Normal people usually go on vacation in late August. He’s probably in some fabulous island paradise with his wife Susan Salary and their kids. He works hard, he deserves a break. And look! He left in such a hurry, he forgot to put up an out-of-office message. Understandable. Forgivable.

Hypa waits two weeks, well after Labor Day, then emails Dick, “Hi, following up.”

She quickly deletes it.

She types it again, “Hi! Just following up!”

(She added the diminutive “just” because she was raised in the 80s and 90s when women were expected to apologize for asking for things.)

But her email goes unanswered by Dick Salary.

Four more weeks pass.

The leaves begin to change. There’s a snap in the air. In line at CVS to pick up her SSRIs, Hypa notices the first Halloween decorations of the season. A witch. A bloody hand. A 12-foot werewolf in cut-off denim shorts.

That night, Hypa decides to email Dick Salary one more time.

She contemplates her terminology carefully.

“Close the loop”? No, too corporate-aggressive.

“Bumping this to the top of your inbox”? No way, them’s fightin’ words.

“Circling back”? Too delusional.

“Perhaps this isn’t the right time”? Way too defeatist.

“Thanks for considering me anyway”? Pfft, thinks Hypa, may as well say thank-you-sir-may-I-have-another.

So what does Hypa email to Dick Salary?

Well, she thinks, nothing is always an option.

But isn’t saying nothing a form of complicity? Reinforcing rude behavior? Like when a kid gets in trouble at school and the mom says “you’re grounded for a week, mister!” But the kid counters with, “I won’t ever do that again.” And the mom says “Do you promise?” And the kids says “I swear to god!” And the mom caves and doesn’t ground him. But then a week later the kid gets in trouble again for the same thing because the mom taught him that bad behavior has no consequences.

Not today, Dick, thinks Hypa. Bad behavior does have consequences and Salary is gonna hear from me whether he wants to or not!

But Hypa doesn’t email Dick Salary. Ever again. Because the truth is, she isn’t really mad. She’s hurt. Deeply hurt.

Did Dick Salary think she forgot he offered Hypa the one thing she has worked her entire life to acheive? Did he think she was so buried in other offers that his was just one more? Did he think she wouldn’t notice his vanishing act? Did he think this playwriting thing was just a lark until her finance career takes off?

Wait! thinks Hypa. I must have inadvertently said something offensive or insane in our email exchange. That’s gotta be it! What could it have been? I don’t recall writing anything unprofessional but maybe I accidentally typed, “Stop The Steal” or “the moon landing was staged” or “Tylenol in pregnancy causes autism.”

Hypa clicks over to her “Sent” folder in Gmail and re-reads every email exchanged between herself and Dick Salary. She looks for something off-color she may have said, or even subliminally implied—- literally anything. But it’s all clearly professional, approachable and light—boring, almost.

Hypa starts to go a bit mad now.

She paces her studio apartment in Astoria, Queens.

She rehearses what she’s gonna say to Dick Salary if she’s ever in the room with him. (Then she remembers she was raised in the 80s and 90s and so must be a good girl.)

She gazes out the window at the city.

I know you’re out there Salary, she muses. I know you didn’t forget. I know this is a power play. I know you’re just toying with me.

Halloween bleeds into Thanksgiving. In line at CVS to pick up her SSRIs, a life-sized Santa towers over her, merrily asking, “Have you been a good girl this year? Have you been a good girl this year? Have you been a good girl this year?”

Later that night, Hypa’s mind starts spinning out: Maybe right after Dick Salary sent that last email to her, he was fired on the spot for embezzling funds from the theater and the FBI confiscated his laptop as evidence and he’s been in a holding cell ever since with no access to email.

Maybe the night after that last email, his wife, Susan Salary, told him she’s fallen in love with their tax accountant, Bruce, and she’s leaving Dick Salary forever to live with Bruce in his house in Aix-en-Provance, France. This then caused Dick to leap off the 59th Street Bridge but he survived and is now paralyzed from the neck down and can no longer email playwrights back.

Or maybe Dick was simply fired by the board because he’s a serial groper whose code-name among the theater staff is “The Cunt,” just like Prince Andrew’s staff called Prince Andrew “The Cunt” behind his back.

Maybe I dodged a bullet by being ghosted, thinks Hypa. Maybe I should be grateful.

Hanukkah passes and then the Christmas approach begins.

The week before Christmas, Hypa’s friend Pseudo invites Hypa to opening night of a hot new play about family secrets and old greivances called Fragments Of Us. It just so happens to be opening at the major theater run by none other than Dick Salary.

“I can’t go,” laments Hypa. “What if I run into the AD?”

“Come on,” says Pseudo. “I doubt he even knows what you look like. Plus, I got wristbands for the opening night party!”

True. Hypa and Dick Salary have never actually met in person, just over email. Sure, she knows what he looks like because she’s been Googling him since his first email in August, but chances are, he has no idea what she looks like.

Hypa decides to go with Pseudo.

After the show (and the roaring standing ovation for some reason), Hypa and Pseudo wander into the lobby for the opening night party.

It’s a pretty typical scene– cheap wine and light catering, all of it presented by actors and actresses in bowties holding trays.

There’s even an open bar, way over there, in the corner. Huh, thinks Hypa, a non-profit springing for an open bar is impressive. They must have high hopes for Fragments of Us.

There’s no line so Hypa decides to skip the cheap wine and get something higher octane.

“I’ll be right back,” she tells Pseudo. She heads for the bar, alone.

Once there, she spots a man a few feet away, also alone, leaning against the bar with one foot on a barstool stretcher and another on the floor. He’s hunched over a glass which probably very recently bore gin or vodka, but now only ice. He’s wearing a three-piece suit, with maroon and gold pin-stripes, like he swiped it from a Guys & Dolls strike. He’s even got a watchchain dangling from the breast pocket. Where’s the craps game tonight, Nicely? Hypa smiles invisibly.

Soon the pin-striped man attempts to chat up with the bartender, who is another actress in a bowtie.

She’s not having it.

She tightly grins and tensely nods every time Nicely says something to her.

Finally, he asks for another drink. She politely, quickly hands him one and then moves as far away from this guy as the tiny makeshift bar will allow. Nicely swills the drink, represses a belch in that swallowing vomit kind of way men do and says to the actress-bartender, “Watch my drink, honey, I gotta hit the head.”

Once he’s gone, Hypa asks the actress-bartender who that guy in the Damon Runyon get-up is.

“Oh,” says the actress-bartender. “That’s Dick Salary, the AD here. He’s a douchebag.”

“That’s Dick Salary?” says Hypa, incredulous. “And he’s… a douchebag?

“Oh yeah,” says the actress-bartender. “That’s actually what the staff here calls him behind his back: The Douchebag.”

“The Douchebag?”

“Not very creative, I know,” she laughs. “But neither is he.”

Later, Hypa subways back to Astoria, Queens. She feels lighter than she’s felt in months.

The Douchebag, she thinks. That’s quite a legacy.

When Hypa gets home to her studio apartment, she isn’t tired at all, rather totally invigorated. She decides to keep chipping away at Lurching Toward Infinity. She flips open her laptop and starts tapping.

That’s quite a legacy, too.

(Theater is hard. Fuck the ghosters.)