-Andy Warhol
Here’s what I’ve been thinking about. When I was twelve, I was given the position of “student director” on a production of The Twelve Princesses at my hometown children’s theater. Now, the “student director” position was fairly benign, as far as power went. It basically required of a person good note-taking skills and the ability to not get in the way of anything the real (read: adult) director was doing. I did all the tasks I was assigned with, in all modesty, startling ability and was well thought of by cast and crew alike. Then, like a samurai sword, fate pierced the balloon of my responsibility-free balloon. Our director, a stern but fair woman named Kathy, fell ill. So ill, in fact, that she was bedridden. This left the job of blocking the rest of the play to yours truly, a twelve-year-old goober with little theater experience and even less ability to control a bunch of over-dramatic theater people. But fortunately, I was also naïve enough to know how bad of an idea it was for me to take over the show. So I blocked the rest of the play, including a fight scene that I still feel is worthy of a Jackie Chan or, at the very least, a Chuck Norris. Everything returned back to semi-normal as the director returned. Then, a week before the show, one of the supporting characters (male, thankfully) fell in a mosh pit and broke his arm. Since his particular role involved quite a bit of the aforementioned stage combat, he was right out. And, as you may have guessed, was immediately replaced by, that’s right… yours truly, once again. I didn’t see anything so special about all of this, but someone in the children’s theater’s office sure did. Next thing I know, I was in the newspaper, being interviewed and heralded as the next Ricky Schroder (he was, at the time, popular). Now, why on earth do I bring all of this up? To gloat? To say, “Look at what a precocious child I was?” No, I bring this up because I’m scared. All right, maybe that’s not the right word… let’s say I’m nervous. I’ve been sitting in this chair for the last three years, banging out scripts and article and prose and I feel like no one has noticed that I’m producing a body of work. Let’s be honest, this column doesn’t have what you would call a large reader-base. Hell, I’d be surprised if there’s anyone still out there after my extended absence. And I’ve gotten no love for my plays, screen or otherwise, either. In short, I feel like I’m treading creative water in an indifferent ocean. I’m nervous because I feel like my Warhol-predicted fifteen minutes happened when I was twelve and I’m destined to live my life in the aforementioned waterlogged purgatory.
