Results by Keith R. Higgons
Parents receive a lifelong, potentially terminal, diagnosis for their son.
The other night I went to see Wesley Stace’s Cabinet of Wonders at City Winery in New York City. Vaudevillian in nature, I can say after seeing a couple of those shows now, it’s one of the best ways to spend a night if you like that sort of thing (I do). It’s the looseness and fun that everyone seems to be having that reminds me of living there.
Between the Upper East Side and Brooklyn, I spent a sizable chunk of my adult life (to date) in those two boroughs. And like so many others, I had a day job… and then I had my passion. Today you may hear it called a “side hustle”: however, there is a difference - “side hustle” infers the potential of money.
Somehow we’ve been sold a bill of goods that makes it seem like having two jobs - your day job and your “side hustle” - is cool. Your day job should pay you enough to finance your passion… but that’s a different topic altogether.
My passion was, and remains, writing.
If you know anything about New York City, you probably know it is a big theater town. Hmm, I suppose that’s downplaying it a bit, theater is everywhere in New York City. Beyond the “Great White Way” of Broadway, there is a vibrant theater scene. It’s not Off-Broadway or even Off-Off-Broadway, it’s Black Box Theatre.
Fancying myself a scribe, I had shared a play I had written some years before as part of a playwrighting class with one of my roommates. At the time, she was also an actress who was active in a theater group. She liked the play and we chatted about what to do with it. She suggested pitching the artistic director of her theater group to produce it - and thus, a playwright was born.
That play, Three’s A Crowd (not a theatrical adaptation of the post-Three’s Company television show), and its production was a transformative experience. I immediately learned two things:
Theater is the last bastillion where writers are still highly regarded.
You can do anything in theater - it’s a creative wonderland for writers, directors, and actors.
For several years after, I wrote one-act play after one-act play and was lucky enough to see many of them make their way into festivals and get produced.
As a creative forum, I loved writing for the theater. It’s kind of like the minor leagues of writing. This is to say you do it for the love of creativity. There’s no other reason - it ain’t for the money, because there isn’t any. And while I loved it, theater was never my “thing.” My love is film and television.
However, producing a television or film spec script on my own is a considerably more expensive prospect than writing for Black Box Theater. Which is to say, it is greater than zero. As a playwright, you can connect with a theater group, and they’ll cover the cost of the theater. And since it is New York City, there is no shortage of directors, and the acting pool is oceanic.
But the rub is that there is no money in it. Funny enough, you don’t care.
Oh sure, I made a shekel here and there, but never more than enough to cover the cost of my bar tab after the curtain fell on the final performance.
I mostly wrote about relationship dynamics - I had a lot of years from which to draw upon. Given those experiences, my plays weren’t often straight-up comedies. To be fair, they were my definition of things I found funny… like dynamics in relationships.
Eventually, I started writing other plays that were a detour from my creative lane. There was one about rendition in the days after September 11, 2001, and one about parents being delivered bad news about their child.
This is the latter. A play I called Results. There were a couple of table reads with actors and directors, but Results was never produced theatrically. I felt it was pretty good and rather than continue to try and find someone to produce it, I decided to record professionally.
Podcasts were in their infancy, and I saw the potential and partnered up with my old roommate, producing it under the pretense we would create a whole series. After it was completed, we got pulled in different directions and the project began to fade into the background - you know, life and all that.
The other day I stumbled upon this recording of Results, listened to it, and decided I still like it. Would I change some things now? Of course, I would. Ask any writer, writing is re-writing.
But I like it enough to share.
Results written by Keith R. Higgons
Director: E.M. Burkhard
Engineered and Mixed by Chris Gilroy
Dr. Gladstone: Arthur Aulisi
Mrs. Ferguson: Claire Lebowitz
Mr. Ferguson: Josh Marcantel