Jon Courie
My best friend, a very successful movie director, once said how envious he was that I was a playwright. “Why?” I asked. “Do you wish you were toiling away anonymously for no money?” “No,” he said. “It’s because when I’m done making a movie, that’s it – it’s over. But when you’re done writing a play, you’ve always got a second chance with it.”
Well, I suppose that’s theoretically true. However, if your play debuts in New York and is not well-received, it is highly unlikely that any producer will ever give your script a second glance, much less a second chance.
I had high hopes for my play, Carapace Isle, when it went into rehearsal at the Manhattan Repertory Theatre. After all, it was being directed by Tony-winning actress Michele Pawk and had a talented cast that featured Athena Massey, a beautiful and charismatic young actress from the downtown New York theater scene. What could possibly go wrong? Oh, the hubris of such thoughts! The day after the play opened, as I read the less-than-favorable review in The New York Times, I knew I might as well slide the pages of Carapace Isle through the paper shredder and forget about it.
Christine Haeberman, Pamela Daly, Meg Wallace and Robin Nuyen in "To Carry The Child"
Well, I didn’t shred Carapace Isle, but I did forget it as best I could. I started to work writing a new play. Then one day several months later, I got a call out of the blue. “Hi, Jon! This is Meg Wallace from the Collaborative Artists Ensemble in Los Angeles. I’ve just finished reading your play, Carapace Isle, and I’d like to talk to you about producing it.” “Really?” I said. “Did you read the reviews?” Meg laughed and said that yes, in fact, she had read them. She then asked me if I’d be willing to go back to work on the play.
I asked her if I could think about it. I hung up the phone thinking, “Well, that’s that,” and I got back to work on my new project. But a funny thing happened. The characters from Carapace Isle kept popping into my head. The harder I tried to focus on my new play, the more insistent they became, nagging at me to fix “their” play. “If only you had written a big speech for me in scene five about…” “Why don’t you have me enter in scene seven as if I’ve been…?” The only way to get them to shut up was to go back to work on the play.
Kaitlin Sullivan, Robin Nuyen, Meg Wallace and Pamela Daly
I called Meg and asked her if we could do a workshop. She agreed and within a few weeks I was in Los Angeles, working on the play with the enormously talented members of the Collaborative Artists Ensemble. We worked for three weeks before giving a few performances in front of small audiences in order to get their feedback.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that, for me, the workshop was a life-changing experience. I learned a lot about the play but, more important, I learned that Los Angeles is a city with an incredibly energetic and vibrant theater scene. The theater community here actively encourages its artists to take risks and break new ground. At the end of the workshop, I flew back to New York, packed everything I owned into a ReloCube, and moved here.
Rash and impulsive? Hardly! I am very happy to report that Los Angeles is everything I wanted it to be. It’s a city of second chances. And this September and October, Carapace Isle, now titled To Carry the Child, is indeed getting a second chance with a new production at the Raven Theatre by the Collaborative Artists Ensemble.
To Carry The Child, a world premiere presented by Collaborative Artists Ensemble. Written by Jon Courie. Directed by Steve Jarrard. Opens September 10. Fri.-Sat. at 8 pm; Sun. at 7 pm. Tickets: $20. Through Oct. 16. At Raven Playhouse, 5233 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. 323-860-6569. www.Plays411.com/thechild.
Jon Courie is playwright, singer, and Imagineer. He likes to spend his time with the characters in the plays he is writing, the characters from the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles and the characters he works with at the Walt Disney Company.
All To Carry The Child photos by Steve Jarrard
