Here for the Drama by Kate Bromley

Author:Kate Bromley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Graydon House Books
Published: 2022-04-03T01:15:42+00:00

15

Two minutes later, Liam and I are sitting on opposite ends of the couch, once again facing each other, but this time, our ankles are overlapping in the middle. I give him a pensive look as music continues to fill the air around us.

“I never would have pegged you for a Barry Manilow fan,” I tell him.

“Barry Manilow is one of the greatest artists who ever lived. If the best and worst moments of my life could be crafted into the most glorious melodies and then accompanied by the voice of a male temptress, we would be listening to this album, right here. Even Now is transcendent.”

“I don’t mean this offensively, but you honestly get weirder by the second.”

“Does that lead you to liking me less?”

“I think it actually increases your likability. It makes me feel like we’re on a more level playing field. You’d probably get along great with all my theater friends, and they’re a handful even at their calmest.”

He smiles and scooches back further into the couch. “Know what I’ve been meaning to ask you? What made you switch from performing in theater to playwriting? You seem to have concentrated on acting for a fair bit from what you’ve told me, so when did that end up changing?”

I take a hefty scoop of milkshake and drink it down. “It was towards the middle of my undergrad. I really liked being on the stage, but my favorite part of each production was always studying scripts and trying to get inside the characters. Sometimes I’d read a play and think of what I would have done differently if I wrote it. Starting in my teens and onwards, I always devoured scripts. And when you read so much of something, it starts to become ingrained.”

“I’d say it’s similar to coding, but that may be overreaching.”

“No, you’d be completely right,” I agree. “And it probably applies to any language, really. I think the key thing is that you have to be actively trying to learn. Like, right now, you could go to another country and be surrounded by a different language while not picking up a single word. But if you went there and wanted to learn, if you practiced and paid attention to the people around you—their dialects and tones—you could learn it. It’s the same with playwriting. There’s a difference between reading like a reader who enjoys plays, and then reading like someone who wants to discover the nuances of writing them. You have to have an ear for it, and you have to want it.”

“So, you switched over to playwriting mid-college?”

“No, I finished out my undergrad as a drama major and then went for playwriting in graduate school.”

“And did you enjoy it?” Liam asks, taking a sizable scoop of his own ice cream.

“I loved it. And in the beginning, it was magic. I was like the golden child, the top of my class. Classmates asked me for feedback, and teachers looked at me like I was more of a peer than a student.

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