A Month to Wear a Crown

So, this happened:

That is, I appeared on the cover of the San Francisco Chronicle's December 6 arts section wearing a bedsheet toga, a crown, and a goofy expression. Flanked by my friends and fellow playwrights Stuart Bousel and Claire Rice (both working different variants on a "Who does that bitch with the crown think she is?" attitude).

Inside, the Chron published a lovely article about the Olympians Festival, as well as another photo. The most delightful surprise was that I got name-checked in the article as an "established playwright." The first time that the Chron prints my name, and they already consider me an established playwright! This, in an era when any playwright whose work hasn't appeared on Broadway is typically referred to as an "emerging playwright"! Many playwrights chafe against the "emerging" label, finding it condescending. So there is something deeply satisfying about seeing a major national newspaper refer to me, in print, as "established."

I had worried that appearing on the cover of a newspaper arts section while crowning myself (like Napoleon) is an act of overweening hubris, and surely the gods would see fit to punish me for my pride and vanity. But instead, December has been kind of a charmed month for me. The reading of my Aphrodite screenplay was a success, and won the audience vote at the end of the night. I'm as busy as I've ever been, seeing great new work at the Olympians Festival, meeting interesting new people, running into people I used to know, winning raffles, experiencing all kinds of fortuitously karmic moments.

And with that, I'm off to see the final performance of this year's San Francisco One-Minute Play Festival, which includes two plays of mine. That's another delightful surprise. I must've gotten left off an email thread somewhere, because I had been led to believe that only one of the two plays I'd submitted had been chosen for production. It was only this afternoon that I found out that both of my plays are in the festival!

I know I'm a lucky girl, and I'm trying to be grateful for all of the overwhelming-in-a-good-way things that are happening to me.

Photos by Russell Yip for the S.F. Chronicle.