Jack McManus on Savannah Reich

Dear Savannah,

I rushed over to see your show directly from a performance of Notice Me Gwyneth, one of the pieces I directed in the Fringe and which you reviewed so kindly. Yours was the first show I got to see since opening both of my projects, and I was feeling raggedly tired but euphoric at the freedom I was experiencing. I love the feeling of creative saturation that this season inspires!

I walked into The Groundhog already knowing it was going to be good; I had the opportunity to see a WIP reading back in May and loved it then, so I was psyched to see how it had evolved.

What I didn’t expect was how emotional it would make me this time around. As someone whose primary income comes from teaching my art, so much of your Professor character resonated with me. The same line from my last experience with the piece got me good: “The things that are meant for you, you’re not capable of giving up.” So deeply true.

The Professor is very concerned with how her students and those around her see her, not just as a person but as an artist. I love the way that your piece engages with the audience directly. I recall you saying the last time that we spoke about this piece that you were considering giving the audience fewer instances in which to be a part of the performance, and I’m so glad you went the opposite way; the way that we are spoken to by the Professor and the moments of input we do get transform us from the audience of a play to the 19-year-old students in her classroom.

I was most moved by (and literally getting misty now as I think about) the chastising speech the TA gives towards the end of The Groundhog about the importance of teachers, however imperfect, especially artistic mentors. Even before these words were spoken, I found myself frustrated with my fellow audience members for the juvenile ways that they had been trained to engage with the piece. I wanted the Professor to have more of their respect, for them to see how hard she was working. Here I understood that, as a teacher raised by teachers, I had walked into this room ready to give her much more grace than many of the people around me.

The joy of finding one’s target audience for a work of art is perhaps superseded only by the catharsis of being the target audience. I felt immensely, vulnerably seen as a teacher, as an artist, as someone who works very hard to have a creative identity outside of the work that pays. I was glad to be all the way in the back of the audience because, by the end of the piece, I was crying like a baby. Thank you for this profoundly affirming work.

Let’s live here.

Jack

Savannah Reich is the Playwright of The Groundhog.

Jack McManus is the Director/Producer of Notice Me, Gwyneth and the Director of returned, iridescent.