they've stopped talking.

I've been away. Busy busy busy, what with rehearsing for the New Ideas Festival, generally being unemployed and worrying about finances, and writing the ending of In All Kinds of Weather. Yes. That's right. It's done.

And that's a weird feeling. I mean, I've finished plays before and usually feel somewhat regretful that it's over; I don't want to say good bye! There's so much more I could write about them!


But not this time.

I said good bye.

Rather: they said good bye. They grabbed the till and the most marvelous thing happened: they accepted their fate. They knew it was time to go. I saw them, each of them, that look in their eyes. As I was writing, I don't know where exactly but they would each turn to me, in their own time, and look straight into my eyes. Unquestioning. Almost nodding. This is it. We've had our time.

I have never been so satisfied with ending a play before (which makes me wonder if those other plays I finished actually did end...).  Maybe it was because I knew the ending before I began. I knew their images: how I wanted them to be remembered and what I wanted these characters to stand for. Their images were already inside from the top, fermenting (an image which explains, pretty accurately, the story of writing this play, with all the unpredictable alleys it brought me down. It felt, at certain times, that something else was guiding me). The ending aged as I wrote. It was ready last Friday. I have never been so content.

I still have a lot of reflection concerning the creation of this play, but I think the most immediate, stark lesson I've taken from it is the importance of that final image (or those final images). You can't just pick an ending out of the air. You need to find a picture (not literally), study it, then figure out how to re-create it. All the ingredients are there, you just have to look for them. A picture has many layers and it's your job to explore each one. In time, you'll have all the ingredients to make really good beer.

Maybe now I'll stop writing about them like they're real...