Next Thing You Know

Next Thing You Know feels like an expansion of Sylvia Plath’s image of the fig tree from ‘The Bell Jar’- an exploration of the need to choose life paths, while understanding that taking those paths might require bridge burning behind you. These are the conversations my friends and I are having- the questions we are facing. Should we make the big move? Should we quit trying to make this art-making thing happen, and get a steady job? Should we quit “social” smoking? How long are we able to keep as many options for the future open as possible? Watching four people work through this point in life on stage is cathartic, a bit scary, funny at times, but mainly it's comforting. This can be a really unsure place to find yourself, at any age, being forced to make big decisions, but knowing that actually this is something almost all of us have to face, makes it a little easier. 

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar