Working On a Theme
Working On a Theme
Close observers of my work might notice some commonalities between my most recent audio drama, The Defense, and my previous audio drama, The Dragoning. They both feature nice women who develop magical defensive and destructive abilities. They both hinge on fear and power. They are structured very differently and the contexts are not the same, but at the center of both are nice and dangerous women. You might say I’m trying to work something out.
We’re in the middle of rehearsing for and recording The Defense and sometimes I’ve found myself self-conscious about the things these audio dramas have in common. I imagine some critic saying. “Doesn’t this woman have any other ideas?” But, of course, I do have other ideas. I have so many other ideas! But when an idea presents itself for realization, sometimes you just have to move forward, even if you’ve looked at a particular theme before. You don’t throw ideas back into the muse’s face when she presents them to you, even if they look a little like one you received before.
I think a lot about Elizabeth Gilbert’s concept of ideas floating around in the atmosphere, waiting for artists to grab them and bring them into being. It explains why multiple artists get the same idea at the same time sometimes. And it also explains why the same artist might take another crack at a concept or idea they’ve explored before.
In thinking about it, I realized that I have previously created in pairs like this before. When the Dobbs decision went down, I wrote two short speculative fiction abortion plays — one right after the other. They’re very different from one another — different futures, following the lines of logic in the anti-choice movement. But the plays were both between ten and twenty minutes long and they both extended their speculations in kind of extreme ways. You might say I was trying to work something out.
Watching this happen with my creative writing, seeing how I’ve been writing in pairs, I wonder where I might have done this before. I was pretty hung up on Greek myths in the early days. I wrote way more of those than two. But I was definitely trying to work something out. But I don’t think the other things I wrote in those days obviously pair up like this recent work.
I suppose the thread that flows through most of what I’ve made in the last eight years has been my rage at watching women’s rights roll back, at watching the patriarchy claw its way back up on top. I guess I haven’t had much space for other things. I’ve had to be responsive to this disheartening world that began to show its face in 2016. I think I will maybe stop writing in pairs like this if and when things turn around for the better. If they don’t, I guess I’ll be working things out in multiple ways for a long time to come.
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Originally published at http://artiststruggle.wordpress.com on March 25, 2024.
