You’re only as good as your next one!

The girls and I met the other evening to start on this year’s project, which is to write and produce a short film having to do with racism. Our goal is to create over the next six months or so a companion piece the film we created last year, titled The Road (which you can view for a small fee at theroadfilm.ca). At the start of our session, we reminisced about last year and the odd journey we and rest of the world found ourselves on.

Can you remember how it was a year ago now, around the beginning of February? Whatever we took for normal a year ago, good or bad, happy or sad, is no longer in play. Last year, we washed our hands when we thought they were dirty. We got as close as we liked to other people. No one wore a mask. That seems like more than a year ago—it seems like a lifetime ago!

As we thought back on the last year, we could all feel pretty happy and fortunate with the way things went for the Stardale class of 2020. Fortunately, we had enough meetings together early in the yead that I was able to collect some good writing from the girls, enough to create a powerful script.

Then, when it became clear that we would not be able to mount a live production, we were fortunate enough to have as a part of our team a good director and company who could transform those words into the film medium. And, because of the way it was written, we could shoot the film following all of the safety protocols.

And then, we were fortunate enough to enter the film into a few festivals and actually win some awards. That was really quite amazing, the icing on the cake. By and large, we all have to feel pretty happy the way things went for us in an otherwise difficult year, with all its uncertainty. And it was good to sit and reflect on all that good fortune together as a group, because we hadn’t been together for almost a year.

And so, after we had taken that moment to pat ourselves on the back, I asked the girls to start on this year’s project, and in our normal working fashion, provided them with cards and markers and off they went to their various corners to write down their thoughts on racism.

The trouble was, when they came back, no one had anything, really. A couple of drawings, a few sentences, but nothing we could really use to create a new work. I just laughed. I wasn’t totally surprised. It’s hard work creating a script and the girls were just happy to see each other again and get caught up. It will happen in its own time, when it needs to happen.

It got me thinking though, and I have leaned this in my forty year career as a playwright, that it does you no good to dwell on last year’s effort, good or bad, when you are starting this year’s project. There’s an old saying in show business, you’re only as good as your next one. And it’s so very true.

I’m also reminded that awards are rare and you’re lucky in your life to win even one. And it’s not why we do it, to win awards. The process is surely the award in and of itself.

If we can share our thoughts and stories in an honest and artistic way, then maybe, one film at a time, we can change the world.