I promise that after GNIT closes forever next Sunday (Itâs now closed), I will stop posting about how you should go see it. Over the past 13 or 14 years of working on this adaptation of PEER GYNT,  a grinding but real affection has grown in me for complicated Ibsen and his complicated play. So nothing has pleased me more than to hear that people who really love and know the original play feel that-- with 3 hours and 25 actors removed-- something moving, funny, clear, and actionable has finally been revealed, re-interpreted, or created, in my adaptation. I have only read the first sentence of one review, which described Gnit as "inward-looking," which is really discouraging,  as I spent so many serious years rethinking, reworking, and changing the original-- which is famously and endlessly (maybe even hopelessly) inward-looking-- in an effort to make something that is raucously, honestly, and yearningly OUTWARD LOOKING. The all-caps means I really believe I have done this. I know for sure the beautiful production and cast is OUTWARD LOOKING. The all-caps means I love the cast and production. And I feel the play is looking out for you and I hope you will go see it and I will almost promise that, after next Sunday, I will not mention it again, except in occasional and everlasting thanks to the people and souls who helped it happen and are presently performing it, at www.tfana.org. (Here I am doing that. Thank you! I would not change a second of these last months.) This last week of posts might seem braggadocios, and maybe it has been, but I am also writing this in the most ragged and plain humility. A play that many wonderful people have put and are putting so much time and heart into, and that I think is a kind of a culmination in my thinking about theatre and life, is currently playing to very small houses in a small beautiful theater and will close in one week. Kind of a sad ending to this long post. Please don't go see GNIT in pity. Please go see it in all of your finest and most outgoing curiosity, your Sunday-best vulnerability, and your irrepressible and New Yorky fun-loving-ness. Also, I know we are still in the middle of strange and difficult times and that while everything is probably more meaningful, it is also more logistically difficult. So you might not make it. That's of course okay. Thank you for reading this. Please share it, if you like. I would appreciate that. (November 24, 2021. Thank you for reading. I know itâs not coal-mining, and I am very grateful for my life, but itâs hard to write a play, which by definition, by real definition, is something painstakingly conceived and created and realized that sometimes results in something magical and fleeting that occurs in real time, one time (over and over), in a room filled with the very specific and real people who were there that night, and whose totality is all the words and feelings and thoughts that are in the air and light, and that very specific transaction that occurs between the play and the cast and those real peopleâs feelings and thoughts and understanding and futures. And then a reviewer comes along and throws some words at all that. It has meant the world to me to hear from people who really know and have engaged with Ibsenâs play over the years and who have said they finally understand it and are grateful for Gnitâs outward-looking and loving stance. Or that, having seen many Peer Gynts, with real hope and desire and interest, they no longer need to see another, or, are excited to see another, with their new sympathy and understanding. It is so exciting to write a play. To try to engage with your heart and your mind across decades and centuries with this scraggly, super-spreader art form that is so punished and punishing. To try to get the timelessness of things into something that happens from 8-10 PM. And to try to see and feel and reflect the world you live in right this second. I am so grateful to the perfect cast of living humans and to Oliver and TFANA and to all the people who came to see the play. Thank you for reading all this way. I hope you are having a good day. Eat your greens and get some sun and exercise. Will)
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