I was a theater kid in high school, but only because no one else would have me. I grew to develop a genuine interest in it during my time there, but I wouldn’t have ever declared it a passion. Mostly it was just a place to hang out.

Once Kat and I got together, that changed, but only a little bit. She had kind of had her feelings hurt by theater, and needed some time to let that heal before she was ready to rebuild the relationship. I saw three or four shows the entire time we lived in Austin before we went to London – something at the Vortex that Tony’s friend was in, Get Your War On, that night of FronteraFest with Kat’s one-woman show, of course, and then the piece that her feminist sketch troupe did way back when we were just co-workers. I’m pretty sure that’s it.

So it’s weird being a theater critic now. We certainly went to see a lot more if it during our Chicago interlude, and that was kind of the point to living in London, but it’s not really something I’d have expected, spending so much time watching, thinking about, and writing about theatre. It’s Kat’s thing, really.

But what the hell? I met a lot of really interesting theatermakers and performers covering theater for Decider and Austinist, and I’ve found the Austin scene – that I kinda assumed would be half-assed – is actually vibrant and really interesting in ways that so many artforms that happen in this city aren’t (and a lot of the same ways that they are), so I guess it only makes sense that I’d try my hand at it again.

To that end, tonight was the first full-cast reading of the play I’m directing later this summer. It’s an original work that Kat wrote, which really only makes sense, since this all comes from her, anyway. I hope that the actors decide to do it – they brought everything to life in ways that I had only hoped they might. But then, I had a good plan – I just contacted four people I’d seen in things that were massively impressive, or whom I’d interviewed and gotten to understand their approaches to performance, and assumed that, since they proved themselves really talented, they’d turn out to be capable of delivering.

Man, was I right. This is going to be fun. I’ve no idea how much time I want to spend in the future directing theater – my guess is that it’s not going to be a big part of my life, but there’s something fucked up about the fact that I’ve gotten paid more to write about people’s work than the people have made for doing it (which is sad, because it’s not like the life of a freelance theater writer is one of financial excess) and I want to have seen things from their perspective. The stigma that critics are the people who couldn’t do it is strong – I’ve been known to enforce it myself, before this recent incarnation – and I want to dangle my balls out there for a swift kick, so to speak, if I’m going to be taking those shots.

Plus, it’s a fucking good play. With this cast, if they do it, it’ll be something I’m proud to have put together.

Which is the point of criticism, isn’t it? As I’ve gotten older and a little less strident about things, I can see the point to having a dialogue between artist and audience – and I think it’ll be a lot more interesting if that dialogue really does go both ways.