I have a list of a few dozen topics about which, if I was granted a few dozen lifetimes, I would hope to gain a PhD. Every few weeks another occurs to me. Today`s PhD is on the topic of The Creative Process. Finishing, to my satisfaction, the short story collection, although still checking back regularly to do further bits of editing, I decided yesterday to return to my play The Cottage, which I started drafting 3 years ago. How to describe the experience? I clicked one or two googles, understanding now where more research needs to be done. But overall, I experienced a sense of familiarity, welcome even, from my characters, three sisters, two brothers in law, an interior designer from Berlin, and possibly a football mad philosophy student.
The three sisters are not me and my two sisters, and the brothers in law are entirely unlike mine. I have never met anyone like the interior designer, and am clueless myself about interior design.
The play, of course, is something to do with Jewish and Israeli identity, but it is absolutely not a political play. Do I have an ending? Almost but not quite.
But what I can tell is this. There is a creative process. I have no idea whether the play will proceed according to plan, but I feel as if it will. For every play, from The Three Sisters, to Hamlet, to Waiting for Godot, down to every new script circulating out there, (I am optimistic. I imagine the meeting with a well-known director or producer, at a cousin`s party or wedding, or even funeral…where we talk about The Cottage, and months later it premiers, fully funded, all actors and crew on top Equity salaries…and all that..) for every play, as I was saying, there is a creative process. Perhaps better call it, `a gathering in of experience, feeling, and energy` or whatever.
