Writing Anne

I have been a busy girl. Busy busy busy. My four year degree culminated in play: ‘Writing Anne’ was a success.

On Thursday night the theatre was almost full to capacity with a very appreciative audience who laughed all the way through my dark comedy. My mom was there, sitting in the third row, brimming with pride and probably wondering how I had managed to so distort our family life and turn it into the anti-hero of my very comical semi-autobiographical play. Or perhaps, she realized I hadn’t had to distort it very much at all. But that’s what satires are all about, I guess.

The Saturday night audience was much smaller and laughed much less. I went from thinking I had created a master piece to realizing my play was a flop. Having that kind of realization on stage while delivering a monologue is not recommended. My darling fiancé was in the audience, sitting in to fourth row, brimming with pride and probably wondering how his sweet and quirky wife-to-be went from being such a gentle soul to a raving mad lunatic who kidnaps men and stuffs them in her fridge.

Needless to say I have come to realize with a bit of retrospective clarity that my play was neither perfect nor pathetic but that theatre is a medium I’ll never be able to pin down and what some audiences love others may not, and sometimes a quieter audience gets more from a piece than a rowdy one. I will always be involved in the theatre, always learning, always loving the lessons.

And one day, when I am a world renowned playwright, some lucky people will be able to say ‘hey, I remember the first play she put on in Cape Town one chilly winter many moons ago…’