or,

Now THAT’S how you end a year.

God bless Google Alert. Usually it notifies me of an intertubes post from, say, 2006, but today I got a good ‘un:

IndyWeek’s Picks for Best Live Theater of 2009

My comments: I am equally honored and humbled. Honored, because North Carolina’s Indyweek is an excellent publication that respects the arts (eight critics for theater alone! How much space does YOUR local paper give the arts?) and takes criticism seriously – no free passes. And humbled, because “Green Eggs & Mamet” was part of a 10-show festival that was one of the best I’ve seen. It included Mark Harvey Levine’s LA 8 AM, Jennifer Maisel’s “Fissshhh,” and Stephanie Alison Walker’s “Melt” – three plays (among many others) that blew me away with their creativity and passion.

If I’m ever quoted for anything theatery, I hope it’s this: Playwrights don’t write plays. We write scripts. A play is the collective effort of many people – actors, directors, tech people, even the audience. And each of them is equally vital to the production. Maybe the audience is the most vital – if a play is performed in an empty theater, did it make a sound?

So thank you to everyone who created theater in 2009 – all of my comrades in playwriting and everyone who acts, directs, works backstage, ushers, bartends, reviews, and (maybe most importantly) supports theater by going to see shows.

Sentimental? Maybe. It’s New Year’s Eve. Gimme a break.