A Letter from the Director…
You probably walked in here with expectations of taking in a fresh, sweet little musical about a girl and a guy finding true love… on… their first date (or some iteration thereof.) And sure. That isn’t too far off the mark. In fact, in many ways that’s exactly what this is and so you came to the right place. But I don’t want you to be totally mislead. There’s more to this story than some clever lines and a dash of romance. Make no mistake, book writer Austin Winsberg fully intended to layer a much greater and somewhat foreboding theme under the guise of an unassuming romantic comedy: fear.
The fear examined in this piece is the mundane, obstinate fear that precludes our beings from vibrating at full blast the way spiritualists like Deepak Chopra suggest they should. Of this fear, Eat, Pray, Love author (and Queen-Spiritualist) Elizabeth Gilbert, muses, “[It] is the most boring thing about you… the most interesting thing about you is your creativity, your passion, your love and joy, your faith. All that stuff is fascinating. Your fear is just as boring as mine is. It’s just regular old, made-in-China, Wal-Mart fear. Everybody’s got the same one. It is not precious. It is not special. It is not singular to you. It is the just the one we all got wired with on the way in.”
So why, then, do we allow this sub-average demon to silently and steadily dampen our choices, harboring us from livelihoods that could fulfill us totally? What hurdles do we have to leap in order to negate and overcome it? Put most simply, how do we say “yes” when the only word echoing in our head is “no”?
In the play, Casey’s woman-of-the-world moxie and Aaron’s reserved naiveté are both encumbered with fears indoctrinated to them by prior circumstances. Winsberg’s mechanism of the character’s inner-critics, as brought to life in the form of provocative exes, nagging parents and social media scars, give context and nuance to what we may commonly water down to plain “bad feelings.” This device gives us context to better grasp the undercurrent of doubt our couple is each experiencing beneath the surface.
You might be able to tell that I love self-exploration. I work diligently to live life as loudly and confidently as possible. But I’ve been known to waffle a fair amount between fear and certainty. I make my directorial debut with this production and it’s been a significant journey for me, plentiful with resounding “yes’s” and some artistic achievements that I’m overwhelmingly proud of. It’s almost embarrassing how easily one internal “no” can derail all of that. In a heartbeat, I’d want to throw in the towel and convince myself that everyone around me was wishing I’d do it, too. Yes, my relationship with fear has been as strong through this process as it ever was before. So what have I learned from fear through this experience? Honey, ain’t nobody got time for it. Plain and simple. Success is right around the corner just as soon as you can get fear out of your way.
