Re-signing myself to six months of discomfort

Why does anyone bang their head against a brick wall?

Because it feels so good when they stop.

Which is roughly the position I find myself in as I sit at my desk with two (count 'em - two) theatre contracts waiting to be signed. The first is for a new production - a double-bill of one-man plays, featuring Christopher Peacock and Christopher Annus - in mid-March. The second is for a revival of another production in July. More details than that I cannot give until the respective theatres sign their half of the contract. I can, however, give you a taste of what's to come in this mysterious logo...

Am I excited? Mildly. I usually don't do excitement. Pleased is about as strong as it gets for me. Pleased that my work is returning to the stage and new audiences will get a chance to see it. Apprehension is the stronger emotion at present. Not apprehension that the plays will do badly - strange and contradictory as it may seem, it wouldn't bother me too much - but apprehension at the fact that I have once again mortgaged weeks and months of my time. Instead of quiet mornings going to the local Lido, followed by a relaxing day at my desk cataloguing and selling books, I will be traveling to and from rehearsals, managing budgets and - horror of horror of horror of horrors - dealing with promotion and publicity.

Promoting my work is the most emotionally painful part of producing and writing. I loathe every minute of selling myself to the wider world - the general public or reviewers or listing editors or whoever. I loathe making up press releases, designing leaflets (the old British term for the now ubiquitous US "flyers") and I find it almost impossible to call someone on the phone to tell them about the production I'm putting on. I do it because I have to do it, which means I do it badly - never creating exactly the right message, never reaching exactly the number of people, never persuading enough of those people to come to my plays. And each moment that I spend doing it is mental torture.

Of course I have confidence in my work. I know I am not Shakespeare, but I also know that I offer emotional and thought-provoking insights in a language and settings that hold audiences enthralled, that sometimes make them laugh and occasionally reduce them to tears. I know that both from my own judgement and from the spontaneous reactions of audiences both in the theatre and afterwards. The problem is that I have always considered that only frauds, those whose work is poor or who have no confidence in their own abilities, promote themselves. Frauds promote themselves because their work is not good enough to stand up on its own. The best art needs no promotion because it is widely recognised as such. Only the worst art needs to stand up and draw attention to itself.

Don't bother telling me the flaws in that argument; I know them already. The best art is not recognised if no-one knows about it etc etc. If I don't promote my work, no-one else will (at least not without being paid for it and there is only the barest minimum of budget to pay someone to do so). So I have to gird my metaphorical loins and grit my British-yellowed teeth and stick my courage to wherever it is that courage is stuck and go out there and tell the world how wonderful my writing and direction is. Which means after a period of quiet my life will once again be mildly manic-depressive - high in rehearsal bringing my creations to life, and low each time I have to tell the world how wonderful those creations are. In signing these contracts I am re-signing myself to another six months of discomfort.