Child/Play

“A story is a wild living thing. We listen to it, we coax it, sometimes we battle it, but we never come at it with a collar and a leash. We never seek to tame it.”  

I wrote those words together with the brave and brilliant Juliana Frick* seven years ago as we co-founded a troupe we called Hungry Bird Theater. I continue to think about the work this way. Some of my friends are having children now (a love-filled shout-up Ashley Storrow and Putnam Smith**), and I keep thinking “Is that what you do when you grow up?’ Meaning clearly I’m not ready for that (also single parenting is hard-- I admire those who do it, and doubt I’d meet their standards).  Because parenting plays is complicated enough. That’s always what it feels like —like all the rules that apply to parenting are the same for creating anything, even if that thing doesn’t breathe through its lungs and cry through its mouth. A play needs to be fed, it grows, it challenges you, and eventually if it succeeds, it goes off and belongs to other people and maybe you miss it, but are also glad for it. As it takes shape, you can’t control it. At best, you can offer guidance.  You can provide support and structure. You pave its way a little, introduce it to people who will help it in ways you can’t. Those people will see other sides of it, and may comment on your parenting, which is sometimes irritating and sometimes illuminating, and ultimately you’re glad of it because it helps you be a better parent, a better playwright.  

They give me great joy, these living stories, because I get to wrestle with them and watch them grow. I get to be angry at them and question their choices and question my own level of control and how I am limited, and how in order to open the world to them, I have to surpass my own limitations. They open up worlds to me. They’re portals to other perspectives. They teach me trust; they demand of me courage. They take me by the hand and walk with me along new paths, pointing out new landmarks as we go.  

I get to brag about them sometimes, or feel shame about the ways in which I’ve messed up, the ways in which because of me the world misunderstands their message. 

Is it sentimental? I mean… sure. A lot of true things are. I always seem to come back to the questions of control and of vulnerability, of seeing and being seen.  Which, as Juliana, who parents both plays and an actual amazing little person, says comes to head in being a parent… people judge you for how you do it, but you still have to let the story be its own story. Let go and listen.

*Check out Juliana’s work through UpLift Physical Theatre. Also stay tuned for updates on our current collaboration “The Unimaginable Code.”

**Resonant folk tunes from Ashley Storrow and Putnam Smith can be found on Spotify. They also play in duo as The Early Risers.