Theater

By Natalia

We all love the theater as audience members. The music, the craft of the actors and directors, the lighting, the spell of language. It all comes together to create a growing sense of something extraordinary, something you can’t quite touch or explain. A true kind of miracle, alive and unfolding right in front of you.

             But when you work in a professional theater, everything is there except the miracle. Theater is deeply physical, relentlessly practical. A building. Utilities. Wires. Sets being assembled. Costumes, wigs. Carpets that need vacuuming. For all of this to come together, it takes someone to set everything in motion, to bring the whole machine to life: a producer. Only then can something intangible, imagined by the authors, become real and turn into a miracle for the audience. Yes, all art is the creation of a miracle… and the selling of tickets.

             I studied at a theater academy, then worked in theater in various roles, and loved theater and theater people with all my heart. However, with time I realized that I don’t like being in the spotlight, and that this is not the art I am meant to pursue. My relatives breathed a sigh of relief: now I would finally find a “normal” job. After all, everyone knows that choosing a creative profession is the worst possible decision. But I had a different plan. I wanted to keep creating miracles, just in a different way.

             When I started writing, I was given the chance to deal only with miracles. My imagination was richer than any play or film, even life itself. It was freer. Better. I was no longer bound by censorship or industry trends, and I loved what I did unconditionally.

             But the moment I finished my first screenplay, the miracle ended. What had been a world of invisible images, seen only by me, turned into a stack of written pages, and once again, the practical side of things appeared before me. I had to do something with it, but no one could help me. Now it was my responsibility to deal with reality. I had to do both: create the miracle and sell the tickets. 

             And in that moment, the producer inside me came to life. I bravely began moving forward because I stubbornly believed that a screenplay does not exist on its own. If there is a script, a film must be made from it. Just as a play and its actors require a theater, a screenplay requires a production team. That conviction pushed me to keep going and to search for opportunities.

             For writers, people who mostly live inside their own imagination, producing is difficult. The pitching, the negotiations, the endless hours spent in futile conversations with directors and producers, the conflicts, the disappointments, the networking - all of it consumes far more time and energy than the writing itself. And for me, that is where most of the negative emotions live.

             With my first screenplay, getting it produced took two years. After that, it became easier. I began to find professionals who were on the same wavelength as me. I met talented people, and the time we spent creating together became a kind of absolute happiness. And when we managed to achieve a result, it felt deeply rewarding. Not because I stepped into the spotlight (writers and screenwriters rarely do), but because I saw how many people watched my films, read audience reviews about how they connected with the characters I created, and observed the faces of people in the theater as they watched the stage and felt that same sense of something extraordinary, something they couldn’t quite touch or explain.

             In those moments, any professional feels pure joy, not only from the result of hard work, but also a quiet sense of self-respect: for not giving up, for seeing the work through to the end, for being not only the author but also the producer of yourself, even when it’s incredibly hard.

             Just like in my beloved theater, where difficulty is constant, endurance matters above all, and the elevated intertwined with the grounded: music, text, light. The commute from New Jersey and back. Artistry. Transformation.Eight shows a week. Bad weather. An old building. Inspiration. Catharsis. Dressing rooms that smell. Cramped spaces. Rapture. The trembling edge of emotions. The bills paid for water and electricity. The full spectrum of human experience, so that the miracle can happen. 

            Do we, as writers and self-producers, have the strength to take on this complexity and go the distance? I believe we do.

© Natalia Nightingale-Grey. 2025. All rights reserved. Reposting or quoting is allowed only with proper credit and a link to the original.