We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Emily McClain a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Emily, appreciate you joining us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?
People are sometimes surprised when I tell them I didn’t write my first play until 2017. I had been teaching high school theatre since 2005, and I had my children in 2012 and 2014 respectively. Full time teaching and raising small children was the sole focus of my life for a long time, and while it was incredibly rewarding in many ways, I felt like I was losing myself artistically. I found it hard to get excited about what I was working on with my students and I struggled to maintain a healthy work-life-art balance. Writing was initially a way for me to focus creative energy somewhere that didn’t need to bear immediate fruit. Writing plays was something I needed to do just for myself and I didn’t show anything I wrote to people for a long time. By 2017, I finished my first play, which was a one act about a group of teachers called 180 DAYS. I finally got the courage to share it with a group of friends and really appreciated the feedback and response they gave me. It was so encouraging and inspired me to write and share more of my work. Over the next few years, I was fortunate to find success in a wide range of play styles and genres. I also found a supportive group of artists to help me grow as a writer and develop my work. The title of “playwright” quickly became the main way I defined myself as a theatre artist.
Do I wish that I’d started writing earlier? Absolutely. There was never anything stopping me from writing from the beginning of my career. However, the person I was in 2005 wasn’t in the same emotional or artistic place as the person who started writing in 2015. It’s not that I wasn’t ready to write, it was that creative “itch” was being scratched by other methods. I didn’t *need* to write, so I didn’t. When those methods were no longer nourishing my creative spirit in the same way, I desperately wanted to find a new outlet. I don’t regret the time I spent focusing on teaching theatre because the years of reading and directing plays with my students gave me such a deep foundational knowledge that I still draw from to this day when creating my own stories. So in that aspect, I don’t think I would be the playwright that I am today without that long period of time focused on learning from the work of others.
I write and teach full time now, but during the pandemic I took a break from teaching while my children were doing remote online learning. This allowed me to write more than I ever had before and I was extremely fortunate to have the support of my spouse at the time to dive into my work. During 2020 and the beginning of 2021, I wrote 6 full length plays, 12 ten minute plays, and 4 one acts. I would never have been able to devote the kind of time and energy to writing while still teaching theatre full time. When I went back to teaching in fall of 2021, I had to readjust my expectations for my writing output. While I still make time for writing, it’s definitely a less frenetic pace than it was during that year and a half. There’s not a set “schedule” for my writing, but I do try to set reasonable goals for myself: 1 new full length play a year.
Each artistic path is as unique as the individual artist, so there’s no “right” or “wrong” time. Everyone is on their own journey and comparing my timeline to someone else’s really doesn’t serve me as a writer. I would encourage everyone to listen to their own inner artistic voice about when they want to start creative pursuits.
Emily, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I’m primarily a theatre educator. This is my 17th year in high school theatre education and while I have taught at several excellent programs throughout my career, now I’m fortunate enough to be one of the faculty at the School of the Arts @ Central Gwinnett High School, the fine arts magnet school in Gwinnett County. It’s been such a thrill to open this program with an incredible group of educators and getting to work with students that are so passionate about their craft is the definition of “living the dream” for me. I consider it a privilege to spend time with the next generation of theatre-makers as my day job and to help them find their creative voices.
It’s important to me to demonstrate healthy artistic boundaries and to model work-life-art balance for my students. When I’m working on my writing or developing new work, or participating in the larger theatre community, oftentimes it’s a struggle to maintain that balance. One of the challenges of an artistic career is that because what we do is so deeply connected with how we define ourselves, it can be hard to “leave work at work.” But creating the boundaries that separate the different aspects of our artistic lives is ultimately the best way to nurture ourselves and create better, higher quality work. I think about it in terms of seasons of time rather than strictly defined schedules. I have “peak” time during my school year when my artistic and creative energy is completely devoted to what’s happening there, but I do so with the understanding that when that time passes I’ll be able to come back to my own writing or developing new work. I’m extremely fortunate to work in an environment that is supportive of outside artistic work, and I’m grateful to get to pour myself into my own work away from the school when the season is right. The wonderful thing about playwriting is that it’s a very forgiving method of creation. Plays can live in notebooks or GoogleDocs for years and in my experience, they’re happy to see you when you’re able to return to them.
As creatives, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to meet external time lines and I do occasionally find myself frustrated with missing out on opportunities or risking burnout by saying yes to working on projects and with people that I love creating art with. I’ve had to learn to be very mindful that my creative energy is a finite resource and I have to give myself grace and time to recharge between projects. That means that I don’t say “yes” nearly as often as I would like to, but I can invest fully in making everything I work on be the kind of art that I can be proud of in the end. I’m extremely proud of the work I’ve done to incubate new plays with some bodies theatre collective, and look forward to continuing this work in 2023 and beyond.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
Obviously, the easiest answer is for everyone to see more live theatre! Locally, I would like to see more theatre companies in the Atlanta area invest in developing new work by Georgia playwrights. We have such an incredible community of talented playwrights in this city: people like Daryl Lisa Fazio, Amina McIntyre, Suehyla Young, John Mabey, Laura King, Skye Passmore, Rachel Graf Evans and Jennifer Boutell. Finding homes for these voices in the larger artistic ecosystem is challenging right now because there are so few theaters willing to take the economic risk to produce new work. But that’s how we create the opportunities for audiences to engage with stories they aren’t familiar with! They don’t know what they don’t know, if that makes sense.
We have plenty of excellent development opportunities here in Atlanta, but very few that result in full productions. When I see theatre companies announce their season programming and it includes the same types of plays and famous names we’ve all seen many times before, I feel deflated. I get it- theaters have to pay their bills like any other business so they want to make sure people are going to buy tickets to see the plays they produce. Going with a safe, well-known play makes sense, especially when audiences are still a little hesitant about coming back to the theatre in the first place. But if there were space within that season for representation of a new and local playwright to see their work fully produced, that could have such a long term benefit to the overall artistic ecosystem of Atlanta theatre. That being said, we as the theatre community have to support new work when it’s done to show producers and artistic directors that new plays are a good investment that pays returns both monetarily and artistically.
We need new stories, we need to hear from diverse playwrights, and we need to invest in home-grown talent. This creates the vibrant and thriving artistic ecosystem that we deserve.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
As I playwright, I try to live by the mantra of “write the play you want to see.”
As a theatre director, it’s continually coming back to the question “how does this choice serve the story?” Every creative decision I make throughout the entire production process needs to come back to this concept and keeping it in the forefront is key to successful shows in my opinion.
And as a theatre teacher, it’s “make good art without breaking spirits.” This is probably the most essential tenet that I try to live my artistic life by because the goal of my work in any artistic capacity is to build connection and community. Theatre is the ultimate collaborative art and nothing brings me more joy and satisfaction than creating art with people I love. I take my responsibility as a theatre teacher very seriously- I’m often the first example of a theatre professional that these students will have in their lives, and how I engage with art in my life sets the standard for them. It’s important that this model is a healthy and supportive one. I have high standards and artistic integrity for the work that I do with my students, but I always hold firm to the belief that it’s more important to care about the individual student and their growth as an artist than my own ego. I want them to walk away from their time in school and the artistic experiences they shared with me with a deep appreciation for their own voice and ability to shape the stories we told together.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://newplayexchange.org/users/27781/emily-mcclain
- Instagram: @emilymcclain234
- Twitter: @emmaline234
Image Credits
1st Photo: Casey Gardner Ford @caseygardnerford 2nd Photo: Jeff James @jjamborie 3rd-5th Photos: No credit