by Michael O’Malley
When athletes compete with honor, they sometimes summon victory. The best athletes do this with a combination of heart and guts, and, hopefully, at crucial moments—their brains. Dedicated athletes who give their all—heart, guts, and brains—on occasion find themselves being lifted off the field on their comrades’ shoulders. Winners.
We pat their backs, shake their hands, ask for autographs, and retire their numbers. We buy the products that they endorse, we hang their posters on our walls, build statues of them, and give them keys to our cities. Yet, though we celebrate these winners as if our rooting had somehow helped will their victories to happen, we know deep down that their victories are their’s alone to claim.
Thankfully, there are writers like Scott Caan that take an athlete’s heart, guts, and brains, and combines them with his spleen—the organ that filters the blood, filters all of our blood, and puts our lives onstage.
When Scott Caan writes, he writes with all his blood pumping for us. So we can know ourselves better. So we can live better lives. Lives where we understand one another. Lives where we feel more united than apart. And, as a result, the victory at the end of his art is a victory for all of us—not just him.
I crave a writer who writes with his heart, who writes about things that I’ve thought or felt but haven’t quite known how to put those things or feelings into words. I crave a writer with the guts to take on challenging topics, and one who does it deftly—one who doesn’t stop until he’s left it all on the field.
Like the best athletes, Scott Caan competes on the page with his heart, guts, and brains, but what wallops you with his writing is his spleen. For the reader and the theatergoer, the applause rings out in gratitude, wonder, and admiration that a fellow human being has plunged to the depths of their imagination, and put it on stage so we can see humanity laid bare.
We need more big-spleened writers with Scott’s understanding and empathy for people. We need more writers who don’t sneer at sincerity, who honor and adore people who seek the road to redemption and the betterment of self, who strive to connect with others, and who know the meaning of forgiveness and making oneself fully whole. But here’s the good news: we’ve got one here.
Enjoy his plays. Read them. Stage them. Write your own.
He’s an inspiration.