I started a theater company so I’d have a reason to make shows.

Ever have to make a choice where there was no right answer and no wrong answer? Whatever you chose would be right because you’d have to make it right which ever way you went? I have a little Minneapolis-based all-ages theater company called Comedy Suitcase. My writing and producing partner, Joshua Scrimshaw, and I started it a few years ago. Maybe it’s the company I keep but it often feels like everyone has a little theater company or a tiny art gallery or an itsy-bitsy studio, dibs on opening Itsy-Bitsy Studio, so my having one doesn’t feel particularly special. But I didn’t want to start a theater company to feel special. I started a theater company so I’d have a reason to make shows. Seeing that written out makes me feel a little silly. You don’t need a theater company to make shows. And Comedy Suitcase is the kind of theater company that doesn’t have a building or an infrastructure or anything other than a name and a particular comedy aesthetic that runs through everything we produce. So what’s gained by having this organization that isn’t really an organization? It’s a manufactured and completely false external motivation. There is nothing that I’ll do if I don’t have to do it. Nothing. There are things that I want to do and I’m willing to work very hard to get to do them as well as in the actual doing. I have a sincerely absurd amount of ambition fueled by disgusting things like a desire for attention and praise as well as good stuff like a quest for personal fulfillment and deeper meaning in every action I make. But my ambition is constantly butting up against my willingness to do nothing. It’s not just that I’m lazy, although that’s certainly a part of it. The real nut of my potential inaction is the result of where I put my imagination. I can envision everything going terribly and nothing working out in the most fantastical and dramatic ways. And those thoughts stymy every urge I have to start a project, work on a project, see a project through to the end. Why bother if it’s likely no one will care or I wont be happy with it or I might eat too much cauliflower and get a stomach ache on the day of a show and end up having to be funny onstage while gritting my teeth and trying not to cry. (Stomach aches can be serious guys, no fooling.) So I have to come up with ways to make myself keep doing the things I want to do. I have to find ways to be accountable to other people and things. Its why I like collaborating with other artists and its why I have a theater company. I want to do a show but I might not. But Comedy Suitcase needs me to do a show or it will die and then I’ll be the guy who let an innocent little comedy theater company die just because he was afraid of cauliflower. I mostly want to be alone but the art I feel compelled to make won’t happen unless I work with other people. That’s why I got terribly sad this past February when Comedy Suitcase didn’t get into the 2012 Minnesota Fringe Festival. The festival is fun and the audiences who come out for it are great and blah, blah, blah. The Fringe Festival is great for me because it’s a thing I sign up for and then I have to do a show at a certain time. I have very little control over most of the variables. Someone else decides when my shows happen, where they happen, how long the show will be. All I have to do is find some good people to create, produce, and perform the show with. It’s the perfect mix of freedom to do the kind of art I want to do with tons of external decision making and motivation built in. I know other theater companies commit to annual seasons and book venues and set up all kinds of obligations and agreements to make theater throughout the year. Comedy Suitcase does a bit of producing shows throughout the year and working with theaters to make that happen. But most of the elements of making those shows happen are in my lap right up until lights up on the night of show open. I have to make the bulk of the decisions. And I feel like I could probably back out at any time in the process without too many repercussions. For the Fringe Festival I only need to decide if I’m going to put our name in the lottery. After that most decisions from the producer side will be made for me. Am I over simplifying the process? Maybe. But a recent opportunity made clear for me that I’m constantly trying to talk myself out of making the work I care most about. About a week ago the folks at the Minnesota Fringe Festival sent us a message that enough shows had dropped out or passed on the opportunity to make Comedy Suitcase next up on the waiting list. We had a show slot if we wanted it. Did I want to make a show? Saying yes would mean we would have 6 weeks to write, rehearse, and market a show. The people we had planned on working with in February when our Fringe fate hadn’t been decided yet wouldn’t be available and any concept we already had would have to be heavily reworked. Also, we would have about four days to knock out a show description and get a decent photo. None of this is impossible but any of it could be daunting and maybe not a ton of fun. But I knew I wanted to make a show because I always want to make a show. I never want to do anything but I always want to make a show. It’s a contradiction I don’t and probably can’t understand. Saying no would mean simply that Comedy Suitcase wouldn’t have a show in the Fringe Festival. Which had already been established at the lottery drawing in February. Saying no would mean nothing would change. The decision had already been made for me. It’s the whole reason the Fringe festival works well for my brain. Variables had been removed. Now this waiting list and shows dropping out business was tossing in a bunch of variables. All new variables with all new scenarios to think through. And not just cauliflower-based scenarios, some of my thoughts centered around broccoli (I like vegetables, don’t think about it too much). My brain was telling me to say yes. My brain was telling me that my anxious mind was a weak coward that was holding me back. My mind was saying, ouch, that’s pretty harsh brain. This name calling went on for some time eventually descending into fart noises and childish swears. And then I realized that we had to say yes to doing a show. If I said no then when August 2nd rolled around and the Fringe festival started Comedy Suitcase would know that it could have been a part of that and it was me that kept it away. My relationship with Comedy Suitcase would be forever altered because we would both know that I had let fear hold us back from an opportunity to make something fun and awesome. I have a theater company because I know I’m going to feel bad about a lot of the choices I make and in order to make my art I need to know where my bad feelings will go if I don’t. Whether or not its the greatest show I’ve ever worked on I know that when I’m performing in The Gentlemen’s Pratfall Club on August 2nd I won’t be worried that Comedy Suitcase will be mad at me the next day. Because it really just want’s attention, good or bad.