In her second blog entry, Margot Lasher—the recipient of the Flynn’s Winter/Spring N.A.S.A. Grant Award—discusses the difficulty of bringing a theater work to a satisfactory close.
Tuesday, May 26 - "Have you ever been to a new play, and it ends, and you don’t realize it was the end? There is no curtain, and after an uncomfortable silence someone in the audience gets it and starts applauding.
"Endings are difficult. In classical theater, tragedies ended in death and comedies in marriage, and the end wasn’t so unexpected.
"I was listening to the actors reading Act III—Newton had finished his part and David and Naomi went into a rhythmic passage that had a sense of togetherness, of being settled, and I knew that those lines should be 'The End.' But the script dragged on for two more scenes. I was cursing the playwright when I realized that it was me.
"I would never have seen this ending without hearing it read by experienced actors, tuned into the rhythm of the piece. I rewrote."
The next N.A.S.A. application deadline will be Monday, August 24. Visit the Flynn website at www.flynncenter.org/nasa.html for more information and an application.
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