Artistic Integrity

Let me just say I thought about writing this blog last night, but decided to wait until the wine had worn off.

Yesterday involved a crisis of artistic integrity for me. I signed on to a project as the hypothetical lighting designer (if our production weeks worked out) back in April for a dear friend of mine. In return I asked him to be my set designer. All of this took place before we had any idea what shows we would be directing. He ended up picking one of the few Thornton Wilder plays that I chose not to read when I was reading the library's entire anthology of Wilder's short plays, but fine. We had a design meeting a few days ago and Will convinced me that the play, or at least his production of it is interesting.

Last night, as I was about to settle in to some home-cooked macaroni and cheese made by Amy (before going out to get vanilla to make cookies for my design meeting that is today), I received a phone call from Will. He told me he cast his show, but something in his voice didn't sound happy/thrilled/relieved like we always feel upon discovering our casts. Then he said he felt he needed to tell me that he cast Joel. He wanted me to find out personally from him, not the group e-mail he sent out after. I appreciated his awareness of the sensitivity of the situation, and told him I had to think about this and I would let him know soon if I could still work on the project. Commence crisis.

I am an incredibly responsible person. Particularly when it comes to theatre, I tend to do about as much as the hours in the day will allow me. I complete what I say I will do, often at the expense of other things that are probably just as important but always fall behind in the wake of a theatre emergency. So now I had to figure out what was the most mature and responsible thing to do in this situation. The obvious answer would seem to be that of course I should do the show, because I said I would and because Will's show is earlier than everyone else's and because no one can find lighting designers this semester.

But it's trickier than that. Because I also felt it might be the mature thing to do to tell Will I couldn't work on his show because I just can't handle being in the same room as Joel at this stage in our (non)relationship. I didn't want to agree to stay on the project for the above reasons only to end up bailing later because of the emotional strain.

This resulted in a long conversation with my dear friend Michael who had to be my saving grace in Colleen's absence. I decided to stay on the project, because I would probably hate my life more if I allowed my artistic integrity to be tainted by such a stupid situation as this that I would if I worked on it and just had to deal with Joel being in the room. It is unfortunate that working on the show has become the lesser of two evils instead of something I'm really excited about. It is unfortunate that I am now certain I will be spending a certain amount of time in the same room as the one person I have been staunchly avoiding since I got here.

Last night I drank a lot of wine. A lot.

This will be something to be proud of, that's what Michael told me and I believe it (not the wine part). Maybe in some miraculous way this will solve the problem instead of fostering it. Who knows. Not I. This is in God's hands, now.