Here’s a fun fact: My short play, Pretending, went up at The Hudson Guild Theatre in July 2018, the very same space where Tennessee Williams premiered A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur back in January 1979. It was a terrific three-day run (mine; I’m sure Tennessee Williams’ play ran for far longer) at the New York Theatre Festival.
Holly Wright did a wonderful job directing this play about an aspiring writer whose fear of failure undermines far more than his productivity as a writer. Michael Anderson was fantastic as Bob, our frustrated (and frustrating) hero. Julia Enos Woods was so powerful as Susan, Bob’s wife. Susan has had it with Bob, but Julia did a wonderful job of finding the love beneath Susan’s deep dissatisfaction. Justine Musselman stole the show as Alexa and Siri, Bob’s AI enablers. Larry Saperstein‘s lighting design captured the mood of the play. Here’s a video of one performance.
The feedback I sometimes get on Pretending is: “not enough happens, dramatically.” For me, that’s always been the point. Pretending is about a life that’s stuck in neutral, a prospect that becomes more and more terrifying as one ages (as I age). You get one, brief shot at life. It’s easy to let it all slip by, until one day you look back and say: “What have I done?” That day of reckoning is coming for Bob. He begins this play in denial about this fact; by the end, he’s resigned to its inevitability. That psychological transition from denial to resignation interested me more than the moment when Bob decides he wasted his life.
It was great to have so many friends and family see this show. Here are a few shots from the dinner Laura, Emma and I hosted after the Saturday night performance:
