Last night, I was part of a panel discussion called “Emerging Female Playwrights.” I forgot I had agreed to do this until I got an email from Maya saying she was planning to come to the talk. I wish she hadn’t sent that email. I wish this one had slipped by.
When they asked me eight months ago if I’d like to be a part of the stupid “Emerging Female Playwrights” panel, my answer was, “No, absolutely not.” That was the answer I told myself. What I emailed back was, “I’d be happy to do it, although I don’t know if I can still be considered an emerging playwright.” They emailed back, “We are delighted you can join us for the Emerging Female Playwrights panel. We will send you an email with more details in the coming weeks.”
Maybe “emerging” is better than being asked to be on a panel of “Failed Female Playwrights.” Although a “failed female playwright” suggests you’ve done something. You’ve accomplished and you’ve fallen. With “emerging,” I’ve been negated, rubbed out, sent back to “Go.” They’ve given my virginity back to me—just like Maya has—but I don’t want it back. I wish I were part of a panel with a topic like: “The Wendy Wasserstein Problem for Female Playwrights.”
The other women on the panel were in their twenties. Even so, they seemed equally annoyed to be there. One of the women questioned if a panel on emerging female playwrights isn’t in itself a sexist concept. She put it right out there and asked whether male playwrights—particularly white heterosexual male playwrights—have to emerge? My fellow emergelings were quick-witted and I suspect they will hatch and become fully feathered someday. And then, perhaps like me, the rest of their lives will take over and they will submerge. I’d happily take part in a panel discussion about submerging female playwrights.
Melinda Fulton, famous for going into universities and revitalizing theater departments, was moderating the panel, and since I’d been hearing about the so-called Fulton Touch for years, I was actually looking forward to meeting her. But she arrived late and there was no time to talk before—I had no interest in chatting after. When she introduced me, she noted that I’ve had 11 plays produced, and then, with what seemed like feigned outrage, added that in spite of that, I was still struggling to get my work out there. I’m sorry, Melinda, we’ve never spoken. How do you know what my struggles are?
I almost interrupted her introduction. But I held my tongue. If playwrights are holding their tongues, there is little hope that the rest of humankind will, as they say, speak truth to power. We have chosen this vocation to use our voices. I write to be heard! And yet, I sat there like a smiling emergeling. I was worried about my jowls, which are less saggy when I smile, so I kept smiling and nodding, while silently fuming that I had been introduced as a not-yet playwright.
And then she said, “Elise is also a part-time mother.”
Excuse me?
Part-time mother. What does that even mean? I am a full-time mother with part-time custody and a full-time playwright who is no longer able to finish a play. Mothering and writing aren’t part-time activities.
Imagine if mothering was a hobby. You pick it up one day, you are fascinated by it, spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on it when you could, and probably should, be doing something more productive, like laundry. But no, your child consumes you, like the best hobbies do. You collect all sorts of toys and books for this new hobby of yours, study it obsessively, take breaks from changing its diaper to gaze at it. You think about it when you should be thinking about other things. A part-time mother raises a son who, in spite of a warm and beautiful heart, is lazy, has been prodigiously messy since toddlerhood, and bangs around the house loudly, as if he has something to say, yet mumbles when he actually speaks. The hobbyist mother will not have the accomplished child that is president of his class, or captain of his track team. The hobbyist mother’s son claims he wants to go to college following graduation, yet he has made it to his senior year without visiting a college or taking the SATs. The hobbyist mother never says, “My son is loaded down with too many AP classes and his lacrosse coach is breathing down his neck.” She is forced to repeat words like “potential” when discussing her son.
Perhaps we’ve gotten it wrong. Maybe Marsden is living up to his potential. He is enrolled in a self-taught AP course on sleep. He’s an AP stoner. The hobbyist mother’s son will listen to music, eat an unfathomable amount of food, and sleep so much that you wonder how he was spawned from a family of insomniacs.
Things didn’t get better after the passive-regressive introduction. Melinda asked the panel how we politicize the domestic in our work, and one of the panelists—LaShonda—shit, what’s her last name? Whatever it is, she spent most of the discussion rubbing her forehead when she wasn’t speaking, as if she was trying to rub off the skin in disgust to show us her brain because how else after all these years do you express, “You see, women have brains! In case you were wondering, here’s mine!”—responded by saying, “Why would you ask us that? Is it that you think women playwrights are expected to tackle issues of domesticity, but to give domestic issues some heft, we feel obligated to politicize domesticity?”
Another fellow panelist said her work is all about giving voice to oppressed women and that she can’t get produced anywhere except for tiny, underground feminist theaters because mainstream artistic directors aren’t interested in giving a voice to oppressed women.
I brought up the princess archetype and the deleterious effect of the traditional three-act princess story and talked about structuring a scene around this idea. I described the scene in Deja New where Laurie’s father calls her “Princess,” and she lashes out at him. She tells her father that she felt like a princess fraud when she was growing up. How could she be a princess? She had a wart on her hand and freckles everywhere. She hoped that maybe her dad didn’t know about the wart and maybe, somehow, he hadn’t noticed the connect-the-dots of orangey-brown spots covering her body. She grew up terrified that he’d realize he was wrong, that she wasn’t actually a princess.
I must have hit a nerve because the women in the audience started sharing their own princess trauma stories. There seem to be a lot of post-princess processing problems.
I will finish Deja New before my deadline. I never want to be called emerging again.
LARRY
Laurie, Princess-
LAURIE
Don’t call me “Princess!”
LARRY
What?
LAURIE
I’d like you to stop calling me “Princess.”
LARRY
But you’re my little princess. You’ll always be my little princess.
LAURIE
I’m forty years old, Pops. My little princess years have passed their expiration date.
LARRY
Ah, Princess!
LAURIE
Pops, do you realize how damaging it is to call a little girl “Princess?” When I was a kid, I suffered from what I now realize was Princess Fraud Disorder. P.F.D.
LARRY
There’s no such thing. That’s nonsense.
LAURIE
It’s not nonsense. Don’t negate what your little princess is saying. I knew I wasn’t a real princess because I had a wart on my middle finger and frogs have warts, not princesses. What I don’t understand is why you thought Princessery was something a little girls should aspire to? It makes me nuts. Do you have any idea how big the princess industry is in this country? It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry built to mess with little girls’ heads. And we aren’t even a monarchy. What’s up with that?
LARRY
I was trying to build up your confidence.
LAURIE
Instead, you shattered it.
LARRY
You don’t mean that. You loved it when I called you “Princess.” I don’t know what’s gotten into you. Is it your time of the month?
LAURIE
Honestly? Are you kidding me?
LARRY
Is there something wrong with me asking? Is it because I’m your father?
LAURIE
Pops, I don’t have PMS. And even if I did, it wouldn’t matter. I am telling you that adults should stop calling little girls “Princess.”
LARRY
You’re wrong. I don’t believe you.
LAURIE
Why wouldn’t you believe me? Why would I lie about this? I’m not the one who lies about things.
LARRY
Don’t be mean to your father. I’ve never told a lie that didn’t need telling.
LAURIE
I have no idea what that means.
LARRY
I won’t call you “Princess” again. You’re a grown woman now. You’d probably rather be a queen.