Playwright Laura Jacqmin on "Look, We Are Breathing"

Laura Jacqmin, whose "Look, We Are Breathing" will be the first play read as part of our Shikaakwa reading series, talks to us.

It’s a funny thing about plays: as playwrights, we’re supposed to be experts on our own work. But just over a year after I wrote the first draft of LOOK, WE ARE BREATHING, I’m still trying to figure it out. The reading at Theatre Seven will be just the fourth iteration of the play I’ll have heard – each time with different actors, in different cities, with different people in the audience. You learn more every time. You question what you thought you knew. You make notes, which you hope won’t be forgotten. You rededicate yourself to getting it right (all the while knowing that your to-do list is a mile long and there are other plays in the wings already, waiting for their chance to be further discovered and understood).

For this reading, we rehearsed early Saturday morning and will rehearse again tomorrow. Questions were asked; notes were given; bagels were eaten. I tend to learn more during rehearsals for a reading than the reading itself. This past Saturday was no exception. I already know one monologue I want to swap out entirely to express a different sentiment, a more difficult sentiment, a more honest sentiment. You’ll have to guess which one.

This June, the play will be workshopped at the Sundance Theatre Lab. For the very first time, I’ll have the opportunity to go in-depth with the play for the first time over a period of 12 (!) days. Until then, I owe a big thank-you to Theatre Seven for refreshing my memory about my own play. This reading gets me closer to becoming an expert on the thing that crawled out of my brain just over a year ago.