Gig Life

 I recently switched my representation. It wasn't a planned. It was a confluence of many different factors that I could not have foreseen. But underlying my decision was a realization of how many dreams I had given up on over the last few years. I had given up on a New York off-broadway premiere. Granted, I was getting work around the country at various theatres, happily puttering along. New York was always the goal but it felt like I was getting frozen out of the market. My plays are about contemporary black culture and it's not taking place in the ghetto or in slavery times...not the cup of tea for most white theatregoers. My plays had been developed at Juilliard, Royal Court, the O'Neill Center, National Black Theater, etc. Despite that development, education, and being a resident playwright at New Dramatists, I still couldn't get a workshop or even a reading in an off-broadway space after 7 years of hustling. I moved on. I started writing tv. It's a lot more money, higher profile, more prestige, more attention. Then I started gigging my theatre career around at regional theatres, and that was that. The dream faded and no one brought it up much anymore, so I didn't. I got jobs, my agents were connecting me to work, so that was that. In the war of attrition that is the American arts scene, I was eating. I was working. Credits of some sort were rolling in steadily. 

But I had given up on my dream. I didn't trash it, the dream just slipped away. It's so easy to 'gig' and lose focus of building a career. For most of my life, I have gigged. I hop and skip around to jobs. Nimble, flexible, shrewd are traits associated with my decisions. It's so easy to get disappointed that you learn to never commit your heart too much. Just gig, one-night runs, short jobs. There is nothing dishonorable about living a gig life. It's certainly a great way to build one's craft. Like a jazz musician, if you're playing in juke joints and fancy clubs with differentiating between the two there is a certain magical equanimity to the life of an artist. You stuff the money in the boot, tip your hat, and move on. 

But what if there was something more than living gig to gig? What if there is a plan connected to a deeply-held dream. What is there is a path to bliss. 

I'm beginning a new phase in my life. I'm officially middle-aged. The fleet-footed zig zagging and multitasking served me well in my 20s and 30s. But now is the painful transition that happens for people as they turn the corner on 40. My life requires more discipline, focus, and willpower. I need not hop around in desperation. The gigs will come. But now it's time to build.