The first work by Rebecca Gilman I directed was a staged reading of The American in Me (my first at the Magic, in 1999). It is a truthful and satirical play about how everything in our lives have become commodities – a house, a job, a car, even a child. A year later, when I directed the world premiere for Magic’s 2000 season, I began to understand her particular geography, how to decipher and hear her rhythms, and how her punctuation informs the motivations, rationalizations, and justifications of her characters. I saw how the precise placement of a pause could almost magically open up to our view characters who say one thing and mean another, who can bring us to laughter in one moment and make us want to cry a moment later.

When I work on Rebecca’s plays, I feel like I have already dreamed them, known them. After The American in Me, I directed Spinning into Butter and then Blue Surge. I learned to trust the irony and poignancy in her stories.

The value of working with a playwright that you have worked with before is the value of any successful shorthand. It is a profound experience to sit next to wonderful, contemporary writers and decode their stories alongside them. When Rebecca (or Steve Belber, or Rogelio Martinez) reads a line of their text out loud, I know what the intention is, who the character is, and even, sometimes, what the character really wants. It helps me to then guide the actors in their exploration, to keep the course, to discover the play’s truth and meaning. It’s as good as it gets.

The Sweetest Swing in Baseball is my fourth play by Rebecca Gilman, and probably the most personal (and political) for me to work on. Something else happens when you work with a playwright over a period of years: you develop a shared history. My son is almost 11 years old (I have known Rebecca for 5 years) and Rebeccagilman (he still says it as one word) is part of our household consciousness. Words from her plays have become part of our family’s lexicon. (Our favorite is “crappy ass” from Blue Surge.) This history and relationship are also shared with Magic audiences. Many of you have witnessed and participated in the formation of these pieces. Rebecca’s plays and the work we’ve done together here at the Magic have become part of who I am. For that influence and for the chance to work on new plays in a safe and nurturing environment, I am both grateful and lucky.

Amy Glazer