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On paper, it seems odd. In 2007, I was a playwright in Chicago with over a dozen productions under my belt, grants from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ford Foundation, and my own theater company. Then I up and moved. When I told people my plans to relocate, they said one of two things. “You’re moving to where?” or else “What’ve you been smoking?” Then there was the unspoken sentiment: “Your career is over.” Chicago just got to be too much for my wife and me. While I had cut my artistic teeth in its countless storefront theaters and underground dive bars, I never gazed longingly from my fire escape at the beauty of salt trucks. Chicago advanced my career, yes, but I yearned for something more – or, maybe, I mean, less. Less crowded, less loud, less dirty, less bitter.

Revolutions, New Mexico

I first came to Albuquerque, NM back in 2005 as a participant in the Revolutions International Theater Festival. The response to my work was different than in a more saturated theater city; the audiences emoted a deeply genuine appreciation. Artists went to one another’s shows, networked, and taught workshops in the community. It was more like camp than a festival. It is still one of the best experiences I have enjoyed as a theater artist. Based on this positive memory, coupled with the fact that my wife was born and raised there, tripled by the fact that it is cheaper and warmer than Chicago (Is “gorgeouser” a word?), we packed up and moved. During the first half of my New Mexico adventure we lived in Santa Fe (a glorified retirement community for 50+-year-old wealthy Democrats), and I didn’t spend too much energy seeking out local creative outlets. Instead, I nurtured my connections with venues back in Chicago and elsewhere. I spent a lot of time in the airport that year. Eventually, we settled near the more youthful city of Albuquerque in the neighboring Corrales, a little village that time forgot. On any given afternoon, I’d see horses trotting beside traffic. As the months rolled by, I became less and less compelled to leave my adobe house on the apple farm for an urban motel room. I decided that instead of trying to split my energy across the country, I should try to build something in my own backyard. “Why should I have to constantly run out of town?” I reasoned. “New Mexico needs theater like every other place." This change in my mentality did not, however, suddenly inspire the ghost of Joseph Papp to emerge and help create my Southwestern theatrical renaissance. For all its merits, Albuquerque is not a “get up and go get ‘em” type of town. But, it does allow room for a creative mind to flourish in a way that a crowded, competitive city does not. I might as well have been living in an artist retreat.

Who says the writer only writes?

So, I expanded my conception of what a writer of drama and performance could do. After all, the performing arts are not beholden to a particular type of venue or a rigid set of aesthetics. I began to write a series of short pieces that could be performed by one person—namely, me. Though I was quite accustomed to producing my own work back in Chicago, I no longer had access to those theater spaces and a cadre of willing performers. In New Mexico I had to be writer, director, cast and crew wrapped into one. These small bites would allow me to present my talent in a variety of settings, and when arranged together fifteen of these small pieces could make a 45-60 minute performance. Every city has its “wine and cheese” set – roving gangs of old school lefties that guard the gates of the art world. Most of the Executive and Artistic Directors I met in Albuquerque came from places like Chicago, New York, Miami and Connecticut. In fact, I never met so many people from the East Coast until I moved to the Southwest. (We must’ve all been smoking the same thing.) I made great efforts to get my name in their mouths. Here’s where the short-form work came in most handy: I’d bust them out at said wine and cheese events, late night cabarets, arts and education conferences – you name it – and, afterward, people would come up and hand me their business cards. Though some of my cold inquiries were met with ambivalence, generally, my pitches translated into prospects. The Q-Staff Theater, for example, produced a two weekend run of my solo work. Having logged many hours with Chicago youth, I’d earned enough stripes for New Mexico Culturenet to book me in high schools across the region. The cutting-edge art space 516ARTS invited me to be on their advisory board with other members of various arts, culture, and education organizations. Things started to pick up. More and more, I was invited to perform here and teach there.

Where now?

Then, in the midst of all this, my wife got word that she had been awarded a prestigious fellowship to pursue her M.F.A. at The University of Iowa. In addition to corn and same sex marriage, Iowa is also known for its renowned writer’s program. (A novelist friend recently described it: “I always imagined that place as this mythical floating city of writers.”) Again, we moved. And, again, I’m asked, “You moved where? Is there even theater there?” Compared to a Chicago, New York, or Minneapolis, not really, but there are venues and playwrights and actors, which is more than enough to get me started. I staged my first play in 2001 in a garage-sized coffee shop, and that wasn’t even close to the most inappropriate venue of my career. So here I am in Iowa, hanging out in the wine and cheese section, practicing my pitch again. I’m sure that I am coming off like some raging ball of optimism, which is far from my daily disposition. There’s no doubt in my mind that there will be lean months, more of the humbling menial odd jobs I did as a teenager to keep gas in the clunker, and the seething jealously while flipping through American Theater Magazine. But these moments always pass. The phone will ring, the invoices will fax, the dry erase board will once again be vandalized with fragments of ideas, opening doors I never dreamed. And, if all else fails, Chicago is only a 4-hour drive away.