standing ovation, quiet doubts

There is a strange moment after a standing ovation.

The audience rises. The applause swells. Actors embrace one another backstage. Friends congratulate you in the lobby. Someone tells you they've never seen anything like it. Another says your play moved them to tears.

You smile. You say thank you.

And somewhere in the back of your mind a voice whispers: "The second act still drags."

Playwrights are peculiar creatures. We spend months — sometimes years — trying to convince ourselves that a story deserves to exist. Then we spend weeks in rehearsal watching every line challenged by reality. A joke that killed on the page dies in front of an audience. A throwaway line unexpectedly becomes the biggest laugh of the night. A speech we loved turns out to be a speed bump. A scene we nearly cut becomes the emotional center of the play.

Opening night arrives not because the play is finished, but because the calendar says it is.

That is one of theatre's great secrets.

A novel can be revised before the next printing. A film can be re-edited before release. A painting hangs in a studio until the artist decides to let it go.

A play opens while its author is still rewriting it in his head.

Even during curtain call.

Especially during curtain call.

People assume that applause answers every question. It doesn't.

The audience is responding to the experience they had. The playwright is still thinking about the experience they imagined.

Those are not always the same thing.

I've walked out of some productions that received standing ovations feeling oddly disappointed. Not because the audience was wrong. They weren't. They experienced something genuine enough to stand and applaud.

But I knew what had been left on the table.

• I knew the scene that almost worked.

• The line that should have landed harder.

• The transition that never quite found its rhythm.

• The ending that was good when it might have been unforgettable.

• The audience saw the play that existed.

I couldn't stop seeing the play that almost existed.

This isn't false modesty. It's the occupational hazard of making things.

Artists don't compare today's work to yesterday's. We compare it to the impossible version we've been carrying around in our heads since the first spark of the idea.

Reality never wins that contest. Nor should it.

The day a playwright watches a production and thinks, "Perfect. There's nothing I'd change," is probably the day she should stop writing.

Doubt has a terrible reputation. We treat it like an enemy to confidence.

Sometimes it is.

But sometimes doubt is simply evidence that your standards remain higher than your achievements. That's frustrating, but it's also what keeps artists growing. The playwright who is never dissatisfied rarely surprises himself — or anyone else.

The trick is learning the difference between doubt that sharpens the work and doubt that consumes the artist.

One asks, "How can I make this better?"

The other insists, "You were never good enough to write it in the first place."

Only one deserves your attention.

I've come to think that standing ovations and quiet doubts belong together.

The applause reminds us that we reached people.

The doubts remind us that we're still reaching.

Both are necessary.

One keeps us grateful. The other keeps us writing.

Perhaps that's why playwrights return to the blank page so quickly after opening night. The applause is still echoing, but another story has already begun asking questions. Another group of characters is demanding to be heard. Another impossible ideal has appeared just over the horizon.

We chase it knowing we'll never quite catch it.

And perhaps that's the point.

If art could ever completely satisfy the artist who made it, there would be no reason to make another.

So I'll gladly accept the standing ovation.

Then I'll go home and quietly wonder how to make the next play better.