AfterThoughts
A Week of Small Triumphs
Forgive me if all I seem to be writing about recently is my return to the local stage as an actor in a production of Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution. It’s my current obsession, I’m afraid, because it must be. If I treat this experience casually, I will not be able to give the performance the script demands – all 76 pages of it during which my character is speaking.
People – audiences and readers – love Agatha Christie, her knack for murder mysteries and her most famous sleuths, the intrepid Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. But, if you approach her writing from the standpoint of an American editor, as I spent most of my working life, or as an actor – this is the second time I’ve acted in one of her scripts – you come to understand her British prose is not the most economical. At our first rehearsal this week, I commented that Dame Agatha would never use two words when five would do. And 23 years ago, when I played a supporting role in her play The Hollow, my then director frequently raged that the script had “too many words.”
What that means for me as an editor is that I’m tempted to trim her sentences to make them flow better, which the actor in me wishes the editor in me would do more often. But, you’re not supposed to alter scripts – that violates the licensing agreement. So, the actor in me must slog away at learning phrases that don’t feel natural to me and, therefore, do not roll easily off my tongue. Still, I give it an hour in the mornings, then another hour in the afternoons, then I go to actual rehearsal.
And it was at our third rehearsal this week where I earned a small triumph.
We ran through the entirety of Act I, primarily for blocking, but it gave me the opportunity to recite my lines with the actual people saying my cue lines and to my astonishment, I realized that I, in the first week of official rehearsals, was likely somewhere between 60 and 70% percent off book. I had my script in my hand, but I rarely needed to look at it. Quite an accomplishment, I thought, for a 70-year-old brain, a brain deeply concerned about its ability to learn lines at this age. So, my body may seemingly be crumbling around me, but my brain may have a few more miles left on it. That, to me, is a crucial triumph.
Earlier during the past week, I realized another triumph, this having nothing to do with theatre. When the firm preparing my 2025 income tax returns notified me they were ready for me to sign and file, they informed me of my federal refund. I had to ask the man to repeat what he’d just told me. When I shared that I’d never gotten a refund that large (nearly four times what I usually get), he replied, “We must have done a good job for you, then.”
Indeed.
In reality, there was a logical reason.
As a paid local theatre director and free-lance novelist, I must report income for two personal businesses, which I call “Theatre Director” and “Writer.” When I earn income as a theatre director, Social Security taxes and regular taxes on that income must be paid at tax time, since they are not automatically deducted. That impacts my potential refund. For 2025, I did not take on a single directing job. Therefore, I had no income for that “business.” As for my “Writer business,” I earned only about $40 in sales and royalties on my three novels that are posted on Amazon. Oh, yes, they are just flying off the shelves! (Inject full sarcasm here; still, I DO appreciate everyone who buys or reads my books through Kindle Unlimited.) So, my writing income had negligible impact on my taxes this year.
As for my state income taxes, I owed only an additional $42, so when all is said and done, I will have a tidy sum to add to my short-term savings, which I will hold for emergencies. That is a relief since that account had dropped to an alarmingly low level.
My third triumph involved the Chapin Theatre Company’s annual 10 Minute-ish Play Festival, a competition in which I’ve earned winning slots twice – in 2023 and 2025. This competition has, in only six years or so, earned considerable cachet locally as the number of entries climbs each year. In 2023, my winning entry, What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?, competed against 24 other entries. Last year, my winning entry, I’m Dead, Jim, was one of 50 entries. Who knows how many short plays will be entered this year? Regardless, a new one from me is among them.
No, this is not an announcement of a win. Yesterday, when I submitted my new work, it was on only the first day of a two-months-long submission period. It will be early June, at least, before I learn if I’ve once again placed.
The triumph is that I wrote an entry I hope is as good as the one I submitted last year, but so different from anything I’ve written before that the judging panel will not guess it came from me. Participants submit their entries blindly in this competition so the judges can be more impartial. I can’t tell anything about my entry in this post because I have no idea who might be reading it – one or two of the judges may even be among my subscribers. What I can say is that my entry was inspired by a story I heard on Public Radio International (PRX) while on a day trip to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N.C. about eight weeks ago. So, I guess, sometimes a day trip can turn out to be more than a temporary getaway.
My fourth triumph of the week really isn’t any such thing, but I will look upon it that way, just the same. I recently signed up for Informed Delivery with the US Postal Service. Under this free program, I receive an early morning email listing all the pieces of mail I am to receive each day, along with photos of the outsides of the envelopes or packages. This morning, one of the pieces was a letter from my HOA.
Oh, how I’ve come to dread messages from my HOA, as I’ve been threatened in the past with fines for letting grass grow too long between cuttings or not taking down Christmas lights soon enough. As it is, my house is nearly 25 years old, and its age is beginning to show. What in HOA Hell is this letter about? I wondered. Will they demand I do something that will eradicate that income tax refund before it even lands in my bank account?
It turned out the letter was a notice about the HOA annual meeting, which like the bad resident I am, I’ve never attended. And since that’s all it was, rather than the threat of a fine, I’ll consider that my most recent triumph of the week.
Ah well, back to learning those overly complex Agatha Christie-penned lines … .
AfterThoughts is a weekly column offering opinions and experiences from Farr’s seven decades of life. He is a retired writer/editor/photographer, occasional actor, vocalist, stage director and published novelist living in the greater Columbia, SC area. His novels include Favored Son, its sequel, And So It Goes, and its prequel, Dear Brüder.