Being Content: Overcoming Myself Paul Levine

“I think being enough is just being who you are in any given moment.

So I don’t think there is such a thing as enough.

Um.”

So began The Closer We Get, a new piece of theater that I proudly directed. Each year, our troupe competes in a one act festival, and this year, I was given the privilege of directing. I searched through two hundred plays, to no avail. One day, my teacher suggested a new, experimental play form: the ethnodrama. The ethnodrama form consists of a mixture of interviews and verbatim theater. The goal of ethnodrama is to accurately recount an interviewee’s truth, including everything from movements recounted by the interviewer to the ‘’um’s” said by the interviewee.

A group of us took a week to brainstorm a central thesis, message, and interview questions. Our thesis explored the idea of what being “enough” means in modern society. Overall, twenty interviews were conducted within the span of a month. To get all sides of the issue, the subjects ranged from young girls to grown men. My love for creation allowed me to easily weave interviews into a cohesive script, ready to direct.

I was overjoyed, having accomplished everything I had set to do. The blood, sweat, and tears seemed to be worth it. My reality...