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couple of years ago, Lisa Kron and I were paired as guests on Christine Toy Johnson’s DG podcast TalkBack.  I don’t remember exactly why Chris brought us together, but what I do remember is listening to Lisa describe the evolution of her career in the theatre, which apparently began at a synagogue in Lansing, Michigan, where, as a little kid, she would improvise Purim plays and—to quote her—“boss people around and make them be in them.”

Lisa went on to describe the thoughtful, step-by-step, but at the same time totally serendipitous way in which she stepped onto the moving sidewalk which became her now long, distinguished career in the theatre.

I didn’t think about it at the time, but the career Lisa was describing made her a perfect candidate for the Flora Roberts Award. A quick word about Flora, and about this award which bears her name.  Flora was a much admired, I think it’s fair to say legendary agent—with a fierce commitment to her clients, almost all of whom were playwrights, composers, and lyricists.  And of course, all members of the Guild.

Flora believed in and supported the work which they produced—but even more than that, she believed in and supported their commitment to a lifetime devoted to creating that work.

She wanted clients who would stick to it—through thick and thin.  And when she found them, that’s the way she would stick to them.

Which brings us back to Lisa who, post-Purim, has indeed stuck to it, from her first work onstage as a solo artist, to her improvisational collaborations with The Five Lesbian Brothers, to subversively experimental plays like Well, to one of the best musicals ever written, Fun Home.

With all kinds of other stuff—unexpected, hilarious, and profoundly affecting—in between.

Over the years I’ve become Lisa’s friend—her colleague on the Dramatists Guild Council—and the person I look to for wise advice on how to change the world, one state senate seat at a time.

But what I have never been is her collaborator. So, to cover that base, I turned to Jeanine Tesori for a few words on what working with Lisa is like. This is what came back to me in under a minute:

“As for Lisa, my beloved sister-friend, where to begin?  She always has the latest and greatest backpack.  She always has cut-up snacks while the rest of us are eating our weight in Twix bars. She is game to sing the latest rendition of a song in front of people whether it’s good or not. She is willing to persist when you feel directionless and despondent. And she loves a good trip to Staples to get office supplies, aka to procrastinate together. We have been all over the world together, and the one constant in traveling with Lisa is the delight in her bursting into laughter at all the shared humiliating stories—but also her sense of deep hope in the face of impending doom.”

- JOHN WEIDMAN

I

didn’t plan to become a playwright.

But there was a story inside me that needed to get out--or perhaps more accurately, an unsettled knot of family history that I needed to express, and theatre was the mode of expression that came and got me. I didn’t know that was what was driving me until, fifteen years into my New York theatre-making life, I succeeded in turning that knot into a piece of theatre that felt like it did what I needed it to do. And I felt like I had climbed a mountain. The previous fifteen years, which had felt directionless and flailing while I was in them, looked from that personal mountaintop like a straight line in which I had been building the craft I needed to work at the level of complexity the piece demanded.

And then it was time to make a new show.

Around the time I premiered 2.5 Minute Ride, Moises Kaufman had premiered his show Gross Indecency, which was his first personal mountaintop. He and I happened to be in London at the same time, and we spent an unforgettable night sitting on the Victoria Embankment, looking at the dark Thames, and talking through a realization we were both starting to have: You don’t start your next show from the top of the mountain. You have to go back to the bottom. All new work starts at the bottom. And whereas before even our failures could be counted as good efforts, now we were in a position to really disappoint people.

It was around that time that I started to pay attention to artists with long careers and to notice the particular grit required to stick it out over the long haul. To outside eyes, long careers might seem made of success. But the truth is, they’re built on a tolerance for failure. Every artist we love with a long career has had at least one miserable, grinding failure. At least one. Because to make work that breaks any new ground at all, you have to court failure. Because there’s a razor-thin line between work that’s revelatory and “what the hell was she thinking.”

And so, this award means a lot to me. I was a temp my first ten years in New York, and I never take for granted how lucky I am to get to do this. This profession has given me many gifts, chief among them extraordinary collaborators and a perpetual means of interrogating my own assumptions about the world. But, as only those of us who do this work can know, sticking it out isn’t nothing. So it’s really meaningful, and a true honor, to have that effort acknowledged by those who know. ★ 

– LISA KRON