In 1973 I was a junior in high school and on the Speech and Debate Team. I was competing in a new event that year: Girls Extemporaneous Speaking. It was hard. Each competitor was given a topic of national or international importance and had one hour to prepare a seven minute speech. To train for the event I read four magazines every week: Business Week, Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report. I also practiced every night after school Monday through Thursday. I wasn’t very good at the beginning. But I worked hard and eventually I got into the final rounds in our tournaments. But I’d never won. The person who always won was Colleen Gallagley from Billings West High School, our arch rival. She must have been six feet tall, her legs easily two thirds of that, her eyes rimmed black, her skirts breathtakingly short. She was scary. And meant to be.
At the Championship Tournament that year, I made it to the final round. I remember standing in the small crowd of competitors as the list of students moving from semi-finals to finals was posted. I remember seeing my name, feeling my stomach drop. I remember Colleen seeing her name, as she expected—as we all expected—and giving a brief nod before walking away.
For the final round, I was given the question: Does the SALT I Treaty give military advantage to the USSR? I was a nervous wreck. But I did what I’d been trained to do. In my first thirty minutes I found relevant articles, made an outline, and kept it simple. In my next thirty minutes I said my seven minute speech four times facing the brick wall of an empty hallway in the school. I memorized the words that would carry me to the next point. I made sure I had a lilt in my voice, pocked the speech with questions, then gave certain answers even when certainty was absurd.
When the eight finalists were called to the stage it was thrilling. I was just plain glad I made finals in my first year. The person who took eighth place was called and then walked back to her seat in the auditorium carrying her certificate. The same with seventh and sixth and fifth. I kept expecting I would be the next person called. Ultimately the only two people on the stage were Colleen—a senior, and the presumptive winner—and me, a nobody from out of nowhere.
“And second place goes to…” a million seconds passed… “Colleen Gallagley from Billings West High School!” We were both stunned in equal measure but for entirely opposite reasons: she because she had lost, and I because I had won.
I’ll never forget it. And, more importantly, I’ll never forget what happened next. I walked back to my seat, holding my trophy, and by the time I sat down the thrill was gone. It didn’t last the forty five seconds it took me to get to my seat. And that’s what I remembered about that speech meet—and continue to remember. Winning didn’t matter much. The feeling didn’t last. I couldn’t even conjure it when, on the long bus ride back home, fellow teammates squeezed into the seat next to me and gleefully squealed, “Isn’t it exciting?” I was glad. I felt like I accomplished something. But it was over. It was a sugar cube in the mouth. And that was wildly surprising to me.
I learned that you have to be after something bigger than the win. Something that means more.
Fifty two years later, in June 2025, I’m performing at a variety of theater Fringe festivals. From the get-go, performers are putting an astonishing amount of energy into getting one (or more) of the available awards. As part of the instructions sent to performers, they urge you to prompt your audience in a pre-show announcement: VOTE FOR BUEN CAMINO AS BEST SOLO SHOW! I can’t get the request out of my mouth. It seems ludicrous. I’m being asked to say, in effect, “Even though you’ve hardly seen any plays yet—or maybe none—VOTE FOR MY SHOW!!!” It stuck in my craw. I was able to bleat out, “When ballots are emailed at the end of the month, please consider Buen Camino for best solo show.” But I hated even saying that. If it was the best, they would remember. My pleading felt tawdry.
And the expectation at these festivals is that you work the crowd. There are events almost every day where you can meet-and-greet, do a three minute excerpt from your play, rub shoulders, gab.
It’s not in me. I don’t care.
So, Monday afternoon at the end of one of the festivals, they send out the nominations in dozens of categories, the winners to be awarded at a ceremony that evening. Supposedly I don’t care. But I want a peek. I kind of hate this about myself. I know how arbitrary this is. I know there were lots of good performances and some less so, and that reviewers aren’t entirely objective whether they know it or not, that a reviewer could be irked about who knows what and it could land in the review of your show, or they could have had a delightful conversation with you at a meet-and-greet and think you are better than you really are. I mean it’s humanity. It isn’t science.
And yet… I wanted to know who got nominated.
Not me. And honestly, it didn’t sting. But here’s what’s true: If I had been nominated, I probably would have felt kind of fantastic about it. Until I didn’t win. Or until I did. Because I know this stuff is arbitrary and fleeting and has very little if anything to do with whether what I’m doing is worth doing or whether I’m doing it well. But it's easy to get distracted and start gunning for the wrong thing—an award—which distorts my experience. More importantly, it distorts my purpose. I simply have to have other measures. Did the story I’m telling touch someone deeply? Did it matter?
Because if you aim for that, you will know when you get the kind of “award” that means the most. An award that isn’t announced and that no one will be aware of except for you. And it will be free of politics. It will be an award that you can trust and that you can carry with you.
When I premiered Buen Camino on December 20, 2024, it was a preview. My performance on December 22 had sold out and the only spot available to schedule an additional performance was two days earlier—where I had no benefit of word of mouth and I knew no one in Los Angeles to hustle into the seats. Fifteen people came. I decided it didn’t matter. Every time I perform I say the same mantra before I go out on stage: “I am a human, telling a human story, to my human friends. When they leave the theater I don't want them to be talking about me or about my play. I want them to be talking about what they feel.” I gave that performance my all. Afterward, a youngish guy came up to me and said, “This show changed my life.” I looked him in the face. “How?” He smiled. “I’m a musician and I haven’t picked up my guitar or sang a song in a long time. I need to get back to my art.” I looked at him a little bit closer. “Are you my Uber driver?” He laughed. “Yes.” In my desperate attempt to get people into the theater for that performance, I’d handed out postcards about Buen Camino and wrote down a discount code that would get them in for free. He came. It changed his life. And that changes mine.
That’s what matters to me. That’s an award that I can care about.
Of course winning awards and receiving good reviews are useful. And you can also pull a fancy sentence about how terrific the show is from even the worst review. That’s useful, too. But when a young man looks you in the face and tells you that what you just did on stage changed his life, that’s far more than useful. That actually matters.
Alone on stage, Susan becomes 23 characters to take the audience on her solitary walk through 540 miles of rain, resentment, and redemption. Buen Camino is a moving story of how grief can lead to surrender and ultimately to freedom.
Briggs Opera House & Shaker Bridge Theatre (White River Junction, VT) July 23
Phantom Theater (Warren, VT) July 25 & 26
Edinburgh Fringe July 30 – August 24 (not 8/11 or 18)
More Dates to be Announced