To write a not-brief-enough 2011-20 first-person retrospective year-by-year career history is a silly thing to do.
Hi. Megan here. I listen too closely to theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli to believe that linear time as we perceive it is actually real, but it can be a useful structure for telling the stories of our lives.
This isn’t the story of my life. It isn’t even the full story of my career. But it has a few things that stood out. I wrote this as an exercise, imagining it might give me new perspective on my trajectory, and might as well share it.
* In 2020, everything shut down and as a high-risk theater artist I stepped way from live performance and had a million things cancelled that are still, frankly, in limbo in 2023.
* In 2019, I had the world premiere of my commission FREE FOR ALL and ongoing development of my wildly ambitious play TRUEST. Working on those while writing my first evening-length chamber opera and a bunch of shorts, on top of paid work in other fields, was a huge lift and pushed me to discover deeper stamina as an artist. I was also lucky enough in 2019 to experience an eye-opening highlight of my playwrighting career: spending a week in complete silence at stunning Green Gulch Farm Zen Center for the STILLWRIGHT playmaking retreat in 2019, led by Erik Ehn.
* In 2018 I was a Head Writer again (leading my largest team since 2016) for the year-long immersive series The Music/Scene and Mixtape at PianoFight! This production brought together dozens of local musicians and theatermakers to create unique performance formats for each of three editions. I loved experimenting with new ways that we can inspire each other. Along with Producing Artistic Director Sara Judge and Co-Producer Rob Ready, I remain hugely grateful to the playwrights Kelly Anneken, Gabriel Leif Bellman, Kristi Lin Billuni, John LaMar Elison, Jeanie Ngo, Katharine Otis, Thomas Paras, Adrienne Price, Marissa Skudlarek, and Jasmine Woods who joined me to contribute their words and visions to the show’s scripts in both virtual and actual writer’s rooms.
* In 2017, I developed and premiered Thirst Trap, a new solo show, in San Francisco. Part story and part stunt, it was 45 minutes of wild work about endurance, resource management, and fate. It was a treat and a gift to return to my performance art roots for an audience in my hometown and to balance my myriad artistic collaborations with this solo project where I bore embodied responsibility for all the choices onstage, collaborating only with an audience of witnesses.
* In 2016, I recruited and led a team of 24 top-notch Bay Area theatermakers to create the serialized theater format Better Than Television, a television-inspired live show complete with fake commercials, real theme songs, and other surprises including Trigger Warning, a cathartic examination of gun violence in America. Also in 2016, I performed new solo work as a featured artist with Hatch Performance Collective, a group that devises site-specific events in non-traditional spaces around the Bay Area.
* In 2015, I had scripts seen on three continents, and enjoyed a wonderful World Premiere run of my feminist vaudeville play The Horse’s Ass and Friends, directed by Ellery Schaar at Repurposed Theatre in San Francisco, CA.
* In 2014, I launched my solo performance Take Me Home: a One-Woman Odyssey, based on Homer’s epic adventure poem, with runs in SF and in Edinburgh, Scotland. I was honored with the “Keep An Eye On” Emerging Artist Award from Theater Bay Area, my ensemble (Neo-Futurists) was named “Best Theater” (SF Weekly Readers’ Poll) and “Best of the Bay” (SF Bay Guardian), and my monthly event (Saturday Write Fever) was named “Best of the Bay (Humor/Improv)” by San Francisco Magazine. Personally, I was called “one very insightful and confident woman with a devilish sense of humor” by Huffington Post.
* In 2013, I was profiled in the Sept-Oct 2013 issue of Theater Bay Area Magazine, and SF Weekly named me one of “11 Bay Area Theater Artists to Watch.”
* In 2012, well you can see more details in my Messy And Out of Date Production History Page That I Am Still Cleaning Up After Redesigning My Whole Site In March 2023, but let’s sum it up as a year of active experimentation in front of audiences all over the bay area as I made first contact with the scrappy, unstoppable, indie communities like the San Francisco Olympians Festival and SF Theatre Pub that would become my regular, ongoing laboratories for low-pressure scratch experiments about what kind of theater I wanted to make. All those funky venues have closed now, replaced by more expensive things as my home city of San Francisco continues to aggressively gentrify. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
* In 2011, The SF Bay Guardian’s “Year in Theater” awarded one of my shows “Most Memorable Food Fight.”
I HAVE YET TO TOP THIS HONOR.
* I was working actively in the performing arts in 2010 and earlier, but I haven’t written up my notes about those years. It would take more time and more coffee, and I’d rather be working with you.
