Patrick M Brennan

Last night was the first of two (only two!) performances of No Politics at the Theatre Cooperative, and it was an excellent debut! We had a full house! (In fact, the management of the house turned people away at the door, which I will have more to say about shortly.) The performance itself was perfect! And the audience went right along with it the whole time. They laughed! They gasped! They clapped! I stood in the back of the house with my director, and we were a pretty proud pair as the play unfolded. At each of the critical moments where we knew we’d have to have the audience, we were rewarded with the reactions we’d sought. It was a beautiful thing. After the performance, we had a Q-and-A with me, the director, and the cast. That part was OK, and I did in fact learn some things I hadn’t known about the script, but I’d already learned what I needed to know through the laughter and the applause of the audience, and through the smiles on their faces when the lights came up. The play worked, it was entertaining, and people weren’t sorry they came to see it. Of course, I was extremely blessed to have been paired with such a skilled director and such a talented and energetic cast. (If that hadn’t been the case, and the play flopped, I might be stuck wondering whether it was a bad script or just a bad performance; and I’d probably just blame the performance.)

Last night, we opened. Tonight, we close. It’s a small theatre in a backwater of the city. But today I feel a flush of accomplishment and pride unlike anything I’ve ever felt as a playwright. It’s a good feeling.