(Green Team) The Kennedy Center intensive was only for ten days, but I feel like it changed me so much. In such a short time I made a group of friends, ranging in age and personality, that I know I will continue talking to for probably the rest of my life. We all got to meet and work with so many fabulous people (among them Paula Vogel, Marsha Norman, David Ives, Mame Hunter, Amy Attaway, Kristoffer Diaz...the list goes on) and it really cemented my decisions to leave come August.
Before I left for DC (and good lawwwd, I love DC), I was stuck. I was debating taking the safe way out and giving myself a year or two in Raleigh to save more money and then go. Sheryl said it best: "Sometimes you just need to shake things up in your life and then it all becomes clear." How true, how true. I went into this intensive calling Hilary literally ready to walk right back out of my dorm room ("I'm not ready for this! I don't belong here!") to coming out an infinitely better writer with more confidence, and the fiercest love I've felt for my crafts.
I talked to Paula Vogel for a little bit when she came. No lie, I was literally about to pee on myself. How do you talk to one of the most influential female playwrights, someone who has paved the way for women everywhere, without your voice cracking like a thirteen-year-old boy? Still, I introduced myself to her and told her about how we did How I Learned to Drive at Meredith. I told her about how I was having trouble placing myself in the artistry world, probably because I didn't quite know where to put myself generally. She was so kind; she smiled and took my hand and said, "How wonderful and lovely it is that you have had a chance to do it all with such strong women. Don't box yourself. Just go." Just go. Those two words meant so much last week and still mean the world to me now.
I try and explain how amazing and beautiful this experience was for me, but can't find the words to do it justice. It was so hard to come back. North Carolina is, and always will be my home. But I feel like there is a bigger need and ache to go and see and show what I can do. And come mid-August, this new adventure shall begin.
