The Failed Show That Changed My Life
Rethinking failure as an artist.
I want to tell you a story about a failure.
It was 2011, ten years ago, and I was on my second full-length solo show. My first solo show was a big hit. It was called Hillary Clinton Got Me Pregnant, and it was about the optimism of the 2008 election interweaved with the decision to ruin my carefully laid plans by having a child.
(The show doesn’t hold up, in my opinion. Political optimism: can you imagine? Also the crux of my argument is that Hillary should have ran for president in 2004, but she was too cautious and thus missed her moment of ever becoming president, which inspires me — excuse me, my character — to not make a similar mistake and have a baby already. It’s cute and funny and full of hope for the future. Gross.)
I had premiered that show at my home theatre, Riverside Theatre in Iowa City, and then took it down to Atlanta for a three-week run at Synchronicity Theatre, a woman-focused theatre run by the fabulous Rachel May. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution named it among the Best Plays of the year, and when the show closed, we drank a champagne toast to celebrate: the show was popular, it had good reviews, and — miracles of miracles — it managed to break even.
Then came my second show.
My second show was also a comedy about motherhood, but it was, let’s say, less than optimistic. See if this sounds familiar to you: I had had my beloved child, only to discover that the cost of childcare was the same as my salary at my part-time desk job (part-time because I was using the other part of my time to launch a professional playwriting career from Iowa, and to put that in perspective, I had just that year decided to join this new thing called “Facebook”). And since my husband made more money than me, it made sense for me to quit that desk job, and I suddenly found myself trapped in this June Cleaver hellscape that I never intended or wanted, for reasons that felt larger than myself. It was a time where I was falling in love with my baby while panicking at how quickly my identity eroded in the face of vast economic and social pressure. I was shocked at how alone I felt. So I wrote a play about it.
That play holds up. It’s called Save Me, Dolly Parton. Or, it’s called that now. Its original title was — and look, can we just admit that titles are so, so hard? And I was doing my best? And I swear it makes sense in the context of the play? — the original title was Feet First In The Water With A Baby In My Teeth.
I dunno, I was trying something. There’s a story in the play about my great-grandmother who rescued her baby from a steamboat that had caught fire by swimming across the Mississippi River clutching the baby in her teeth by his diaper, and that, I argue, is early motherhood in a nutshell: panicked, impossible decisions flanked by danger.
But it was a terrible title. When I premiered it at Riverside in the fall of 2011, it sold out and was a big hit — but even my fans couldn’t remember that title. Folks would pass me in town and shout out their windows, “I loved your show Baby With The Bathwater!” And I’d say, “…Thanks!”
I remember Rachel May begging me to change it before bringing it to Atlanta. “I don’t know how to sell that title,” she said, but I couldn’t think of anything else. And my director (let’s blame it on Alexis!) made the argument that, contextually, that’s the central metaphor of the play, right? Right? So we brazened it out. I would close the show in Iowa at the end of September, and I would bring it to Atlanta in time for the holidays.
And then I got pregnant.
I remember when I figured it out. I had been feeling out of sorts, cranky, and I was at the theatre for the last week of the run and I was grumbling that my breasts were sore — and it hit me like a bucket of cold water. I knew that particular soreness. I took a pregnancy test but didn’t want to believe it.
I did not want to be pregnant. I felt like I had spent the last three years climbing out of a hole the first baby had dug, and a second baby would throw me back into the hole. I had finally, finally gotten my body back — I was lean and strong, I looked incredible. Here, take a look:
I looked like I could star in a pantyhose commercial. Look at that hair! Plus I had a hot new play on my hands, and a little tour to look forward to; I had managed to get my kid in preschool and wheedled a patchwork of relatives (okay, my mother) to “help out” while I was gone. In the play — you know, the one I was currently performing about the ambivalence of motherhood — the protagonist has a revelation that the answer to all her problems is that she needs a babysitter, and it always got a a big laugh. When you’re a new mother, childcare is both the question and the answer to everything. You wanna go on tour, Megan? Wanna go to the movies? Wanna take this job, or start this business, or have a moment to yourself? The question is childcare. The answer is childcare.
So time and I had solved that puzzle. And now here was this new baby threatening to fuck it all up.
When I went to the doctor, and the nurse confirmed my pregnancy by declaring, “You’re a fertile Myrtle!” I burst into tears. I did not want to be a fertile Myrtle.
But of course I would go through with it. My husband wanted a second child badly; so did his parents. I did too, in theory. The perfect solution would be if my husband could have the baby this time, and if he could quit his job, and I could still do my work and wear my regular clothes and take showers regularly, then okay. I thought I would maybe have a second kid later, next year, another time. But I was 36 years old, clock ticking, and now here I was, knocked up. “Hell,” I thought. “Just get it over with.”
So I cut all my hair off — who has time for hair — swapped out my costume for a more “forgiving” one, and headed to Atlanta. I decided not to tell anyone I was pregnant. It complicated the narrative.
My show was scheduled to run in repertory with The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Synchronicity had booked a 200-seat theatre space in downtown Atlanta. The kid’s show would run matinees, and I would run evenings. I didn’t need a fancy set or anything — such is the genius of the one-person show — so it was an easy transition.
The problem was, nobody came.
That’s not true: one night we had nine people. The largest crowd was opening night, which was thirty. Part of it was the weather, uncharacteristically sleety for Georgia. Part of it was that fucking title — it was too long, too hard to remember. I think we’d all thought I could coast on some good will from the last show, but alas.
The reviewers were mixed. Some really loved it. One reviewer — a man, I feel compelled to tell you — said it was a cute story but nothing he hadn’t heard before. That one stayed with me because I thought, if this story was so familiar, why was I so shocked when it happened to me? One particularly cutting review said the play was great but the acting was terrible.
That one hurt, since I was the actor.
To be fair to me, I had a lot on my mind. I was pregnant and figuring that whole thing out. Plus, I was flailing: it’s not hard to perform in front of a small crowd, provided you’re also in a small space. But comedy requires density. Trying to reach a dozen people flung over a 200-seat auditorium? Death.
Every night in my dressing room, I’d pray that they’d cancel the show. If they sold more than six tickets, it would go on. And so it went on. I developed a kind of grim ritual: dully applying my makeup, praying to be put out of my misery, then bitterly cursing my fate to have to march out there, humiliated at my failure to put butts in seats. And then, just before hitting the stage, I would take a deep breath and tell myself to play for the people who actually bought tickets, and forget the people who aren’t here. Nine people want to see this show, Megan. Play for them. Give them your whole heart.
Eventually, the show closed and I went back home and had the baby, and she was perfect. And in the intervening ten years, I’ve reflected ruefully but sweetly on that experience: you win some, you lose some. It motivated me to get better as an actor, which I think I have. It’s become one of those “that’s show biz!” stories that are so fun to tell. And six years after that experience, when I found myself in Edinburgh performing for four people, two of whom didn’t speak English, I knew how to handle it. I played for the ones who wanted to be there, and I forgave the ones who had other things to do.
But I always thought of it as a failure, my failure. I didn’t have a better title. I wasn’t able to draw the bodies. C’est la vie.
And then last night, I got a message.
I was attending a webinar through the Playwrights Center. The magic of our pandemic era is that Zoom is a thing we all know how to do now, so even though the Playwrights Center is in Minnesota and I’m in Iowa, I can go to the events. And I kept my camera off because it’s hard to concentrate on the speaker when haunted by the specter of your own face. The audience was all playwrights, and the webinar was about business stuff.
The chat popped up. It was a direct message to just me, from one of the other attendees.
“Hey Megan, just want to say I saw your solo show ‘feet first…’ at Synchronicity Theatre a million years ago and I still think about it, especially now that I’ve had kids. It was so funny and honest and gross and great and it made an impact.”
“You’ve made my day!!!” I responded, or something to that effect. There were a lot of exclamation points. I was so touched! Flattered, of course, but also…didn’t this person know they were talking about my failure?
The webinar, incidentally, was about recontextualizing the ideas of “success” and “failure” as playwrights. If you submit your play to a theatre and they don’t do it, is it a failure? If you apply for a grant and don’t get it, did you fail? What does it mean to be successful in this I-don’t-have-the-stomach-to-call-it-an-industry?
The difference between artists and entrepreneurs, I teach my students, is that art is about process, and business is about results. There’s no such thing as an unnecessary draft, every play teaches you what you need to write the next play, etc. If you view art making through a narrow business lens, it will strangle your art. There’s not enough money in the theatre to sustain that mindset. You have to view your art making as something deeper, something more fundamental rather than transactional. When I get onstage to lead an audience through an experience of my own design, I am doing something more than entertaining them. “Entertainment” implies that it’s something I do for them, separate from myself, when the reality of theatre is it’s something we do for each other. The audience changes me; we change each other. That’s why it’s so transformative.
Speaking of transformations, I changed the title to Save Me, Dolly Parton, and the play has picked up a nice second life of folks putting it on at fringe festivals and the like. It’s a great role for a woman. If it comes to your town, you should get a babysitter and go.
