I’m a late bloomer, as they say. I’m constantly interviewing playwrights as part of my work for The Subtext Podcast. In the vast majority (if not all) of the the interviews the playwright I’m talking to discusses how somebody when they were young introduced them to the theatre. Somebody nudged them into being an actor or a writer. They talk about how they were inspired by plays. When I am listening to these stories I think about how when I was young all I knew was sports. I played football. I was a (terrible) pole vaulter on the track team. I thought life was supposed to be day jobs and sports. I didn’t have those teachers or mentors early on pushing me towards the arts. I was left to my own devices. And left to my own devices it took me a very long time. And what a great lesson that was for me to learn: I am not different because I lacked an early teacher; I am the same in that playwrights walk individual paths to get to the places we find ourselves.

I spent the growing up years of my life assuming my future would be all about those 9-5 jobs but I always had this inkling that I needed more, if not more than simply something else. Each time I felt like life was bottoming out, when I was 8 years old, 12 years old, 15, 20, 27... I was inches away from finding an end, but this inkling kept me moving. I never realized that my purpose in life is to simply find a purpose. I was well into my 30s when that happened. And now, as I grow into middle-age, I feel so far behind my peers, but at the same time I realize I would never be the writer I am if all of this started for me when I was a kid. I wasn’t ready for it then. It all came to me the moment I was actually prepared to handle it.

I don’t bottom out any more because, whatever my playwriting career looks like, I am a playwright and playwriting is my ballast. I often say I may die buried under a pile of unproduced plays because I can never know how the theatre world will find my work, or find the will to want to support it. The truth is, though, the plays will always be there, not to bury me, but to hold me upright.

My writing focuses on the existential questions people ponder. The characters I write are, like me, suffering from that desperate need to find footing in life. They struggle through what for some people might be basic: finding authentic human connections. My characters aren’t successful by any traditional measure. They tend not to even know what that means. But they try hard to be good people and to get away from whichever toxic or challenging situation they find themselves in. I want to write stories for these characters because I want to help them find their way out. I suppose in that way, as a playwright I’m like a cartographer for characters, drawing maps for them to follow.

I make theatre because I want to be with people, not be in competition with them for recognition. I want to hold hands with an audience and use the story being told on stage as a pathway into our own unique inner obstacles, and come out with a deeper understanding of ourselves.

Perhaps when the stories end there’s a flicker of hope that people will return to their lives more empathetic, or in the very least aware of their need to show and be shown empathy.

Thank you for reading this.

-BJP