Going going gone

Brace yourself: this blog is about to take a turn for the topical. Because due to a series of disastrous budgeting miscalculations paired with the moribund global economy, Portland Center Stage has informed me it must now move resolutely forward … without me. I’m one of a whole gaggle getting “let go.” Included in the cuts is Megan Ward, which means that the entire Literary Department, such as it was, is gone.

Yeah, we’re history. I wish I could say that I’d swap you the hairy details for a double martini, but this is about the size of it.

Have you ever been to one of those Japanese spas where you rush from a hot sauna and then cannonball into a cold tub? This is like that. Last week I wasted a couple of days feeling listless and depressed, then snapped out of it to take stock. Fact is: I haven’t been out of work, as a theater person, since 1985. Even the short gap between the A.S.K. debacle and joining the PCS company was stuffed full of freelance gigs. 24 years is a good long run. But now it’s over.

Over, really? As a career, probably yes. Of course I’ll be looking for creative outlets that can use my participation; I continue to be inspired and moved and shaken by live theater. and still want to be part of it. That’s not going to change. But as a career….here’s the rub. If I were willing to leap-frog from one venue to the next, I could keep my brilliant career. Literary czars are notorious for this; they’re hired to be advisors, but all too often it turns out their bosses don’t want to be advised after all. Or the literati realize their ADs just wanted script rejecters, or other strains of apologists. “Creative tensions” develop and the literary person moves on.

But now, well….being a man of a certain age, I’m no longer so enamored of the Lost in Space mentality, visiting a new planet every two years. I love living in Portland, and so does my family. After seven years here, I’m less interested than ever in relocating to the blighted city of [you name it] just so that I can hang on to my theater cred. Frankly, I’d rather be unemployed in Portland than toiling away in [you know where].

So. All of the sudden I need a new form of livelihood. I’m open to suggestions.

Fortunately, I started SuperScript a few months ago – a fledgling business, to be sure, and unlikely to support me for years to come. If ever. But who knows. Already it has taken off fast enough to make it a struggle to keep up, alongside my 24/7 PCS job. Actually, one good thing about leaving the company is that I no longer have a conflict of interest about working with writers on playscripts, so perhaps there will be interest in direct dramaturgical counsel.

Anyway, virtually overnight it has become a brave new world. To quote The Bard. And Aldous Huxley. And Grace Slick. What am I going to give to it? The prospect is scary, and daunting, and – most surprisingly of all – exciting. You don’t get to reinvent yourself every day.

Stay tuned, therefore. Watch me oscillate, probably on a daily basis, between horror and fun. Or maybe those will be one and the same. Think?