Spent the evening at Arts Collinwood for the Sunday Roast, featuring writers Lee Chilcote, Catherine Donnelly and Toni K. Thayer. I like Lee and Catherine's work, but I was really there to see my wife. You know how it is.
When I first presented the staged reading in August 2002, someone, I think it was Faye, said it is a long-standing belief that it takes ten years to be able to grapple with and present a major life trauma as a piece of writing. I had done it in less than two. I don't know if it was the right thing to do or not, but that's the way I swing.
When Christine Howey reviewed I HATE THIS after the 2003 Big Box run, she had one little thing to quibble about, and that was that Toni didn't get much of a voice. This is true, but I also think it is only correct. This is about the father, the guy on the outside. Her story, her voice, is hers. If she weren't a writer, maybe I would try to tell that story for her, but I knew I did not have to, that her story is hers, and that she would tell it.
Eventually.
It has taken ten years.
Tonight she told the story, her story, in person. She has incorporated aspects of her experience into other works, but not THE STORY. Calvin's story, as told by the mother.
She'd written this some time ago, and it has sat. It needed work. Her peers had several extremely helpful notes about elements of it which led her story in different directions which strayed from this story. This time. What happened, to her. And she spent a great deal of the day today finishing. She never let it rest - not even when I told her just to let it go, that what she had was fine, that the crowd tonight would eat it up, that she needed distance, and that she could polish it afterward.
Shame on me.
Thankfully, she did not rest. And she got it right. And she read it, out loud. And now her story is ready to reach a larger world.
Someone should publish this.
2 comments:
I am sorry we weren't able to attend. I would like to hear her story.
We are hoping it gets published! Wish us luck!
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