[brinspotting] Insomniacs Day 2024
Yesterday was 41 days (which was five weeks and six days) of the Ómer, which means today is the day that my play Insomniacs takes place.
For those who don’t know, Insomniacs is a play I started writing in earnest back in 2019. It’s about a mostly trans polycule in Brooklyn who collectively have not gotten any sleep. It’s about visions and omens and the Inexplicability of the presence of G-d. It’s about how repressed trauma bubbles up thru the cracks in the floorboards and oozes out in forms that disorient and bewilder. It’s about the fallibility of memory and the necessity of community in anchoring the past. It’s about the fact that there are two different versions of the Flood story woven together in Bəreishit. There’s a lot going on in it, in other words.
The show takes place on the 42nd day of the Ómer, the Ómer being the period of the Jewish calendar that stretches from Passover to Shavu’ot, from the festival of liberation to the festival of revelation. The whole period lasts 49 days. We’re getting close, but we’re not quite there yet. There’s a little more time to go.
Back when I was still on Twitter, I would pretty regularly post “Happy Insomniacs Day!” on the 42nd day of the Ómer, in the spirit of “haha, what a fun inside joke we would all be sharing if you knew this play (which you don’t, because it hasn’t been produced, and none of you (as far as I know) are psychic”. We did put up a little Zoom workshop of it a few years back, which was well attended for what it was, but if you weren’t one of those few dozen attendees (or someone close enough that I’ve sent the script to you at one point or another over the years), bupkis.
I think Insomniacs is a good play. I think if it were produced for a wider audience, it would find its fandom, if perhaps a niche one. (I’ll be real, it’s no CATS.) And so every year when we get to this point in the Ómer, I feel a little bit of sadness, a little mournful sigh that that hasn’t happened yet, that everything this show could be is still stuck in the unreal world of potential, still a set of interlinked hypotheticals.
Which in turn makes it feel like a microcosm for my theatrical career as a whole. I’ve had some great cabarets and readings, and I have some exciting things in the works, but in the six years since finishing my master’s, I’ve made less progress towards establishing myself as a theatrical writer than I hoped. My résumé is still quite thin. I have yet to ~arrive~, as they say.
And some of that is luck, and some of it is taste, and some of it is is just, you know, the dizzying onrush of Life with all its complications (I mean, seriously, in the past 4 years I’ve moved twice, had two surgeries, gotten married, taken care of my husband thru two other surgeries, started a new job, and survived the onset of a plague). But also, if I’m honest, part of it is that I haven’t been trying very hard.
There’s no doubt in my mind that if I hustled more, I would be further along in my career. There have been plenty plenty of calls for scripts I could have applied for but didn’t, one way or another. I certainly wouldn’t have gotten all of them, but if you want fish to bite, you do actually have to bait the hook and put it in the water, and the more often I put my name out there, the more people are going to have me in the back of their minds when it comes time to put together other projects down the line. Theatrical careers don’t just happen, most of the time; you have to actively make them.
I would be further along in my career, but I don’t think I’d be happier. I think, in fact, I would be kind of miserable. Putting together application after application takes time and effort and results in near constant disappointment. It is exhausting and dispiriting and more often than not lacking in eternal reward. And it takes time away from other pursuits. Curling up on the couch to watch TV with my husband doesn’t advance my career, but it’s something I wouldn’t give up for Broadway. Sitting in a park watching the light change as shabbos bends towards dusk doesn’t get me any closer to quitting my day job, but I wouldn’t give it up for bustle instead. Taking the time to really savor life as I wander thru it isn’t the best way to make a theatrical career happen. Unfortunately, I’ve decided to enjoy life anyway.
Maybe that means I’ll always have a small, patchy career. Maybe that means most of what I write will never be done with sets, costumes, and lights. I’m not going to pretend I feel no qualms about that, but the right decision can still be the right one even if it comes with sadness at its edges. I’m applying for things I have the bandwidth to apply for. I’m trying to stay close to performers who are excited about my work. I’m working on letting the rest go. I’m not quite there yet, but I’m counting my way up towards it. Maybe one day I’ll arrive.
This was something a little different from my usual newsletter fare. Are you interested in seeing more occasional essays/reflections like this, or would you prefer I stick to just event announcements? Let me know if you have strong feelings! I can’t commit to any kind of regular blogging practice at this point in my life, but I still do sometimes feel the urge to write blog posts, and this seems like it might be a good place to channel that energy. Either way, I wish you only forward momentum on whatever personal journeys you find yourself moving thru on your own life. It’s a big mountain, and the wilderness is wide, but day by day, we persist, and sometimes even advance.