b2 or not b2
what the dramaturgy of chess and the chess of intimacy teach me about vulnerability
My favorite hobby is to sit at a coffee shop and watch other people. I’m doing it right now.
A woman across the room is reading the new Zadie Smith novel. I should text Lukia and ask if she thinks that book is any good, and based on Lukia’s impression of the novel and how much of this random woman’s fashion taste is derived from the TikTok millennial zeitgeist, I can spin assumptions of how much she would annoy me if we ever interacted. A relatively cute guy tucked in the corner of a couch behind me, hunched over his laptop, looks like a man I briefly dated last summer–I wonder if this stranger also studies immigration law and likes Mexican food, and what my attraction to this stranger says about my taste in men.
I spend a lot of time in cafes because a significant chunk of my job is to read plays, read about the plays, and communicate my thoughts about the plays to add to a conversation of whether the company should consider them for production, consider the artist’s future projects, or otherwise. It’s shameful to admit how often I decide by the end of page ten that this play probably isn’t suitable for the company, which leaves me to read the remainder of the play as an investigation, collecting evidence for the “no” that I’m already mostly determined to give. The point of doing this work at coffee shops is because of the range of life that is socially acceptable all in the same space–working, first date-ing (ask me about my First Date Theory!), studying, hobbying. It’s an activity that provides relief for when I decide that I’m already annoyed by a play.
Witnessing the minutiae of the posture between coworkers having happy hour is exactly why I find this activity entertaining: I can create a story between these people that I find more interesting than what’s on the page. In reality, all that’s available to me is the space between us. Because I know nothing, I have no choice but to wonder, and potentially to ask questions. This reminder of curiosity softens me.
The reminders are so often needed that I have fears of not being cut out for the life of a literary manager, or of a dramaturg–a role that’s typically the bastion of experimentation, curiosity, and forward-thinkingness in a theatre setting. A role that I’m training for right now in my job, in a department especially dedicated to reading and cultivating new plays. This fear makes even less sense when you consider that I applied to this fellowship in the first place for the purpose of immersing myself in that exact sea of experimentation and openness. Or maybe it makes perfect sense, because I understand that I lack this trait and I can at least mitigate this gap by working somewhere that will force me to practice it. Or a secret, more insidious, third option: I understand the value of emotional openness in a professional, theatrical sense, but cannot grasp it personally.
I’ve built part of a career on this being the case. Before I moved out to DC, the majority of the theatre gigs I booked were as an intimacy choreographer. I enjoy the problem-solving of portraying some of the most vulnerable states of humanity in ways that are emotionally, physically, and mentally sustainable for the performers, which includes talking about and teaching intimacy choreography in de-sexualized ways. So the reality of staging what is perceived as a steamy makeout has come about with significantly less sexy language (something like “Bone level kiss drawing figure eights with your chins for 3 counts then nose switch on 4 and bone-level figure eight for 3 counts, then open on a quick 1 count while seeking eye contact.”) So, I don’t embody intimacy; I use it. I dated the immigration law student last summer; if dates are what you call the trips to the Mexican restaurant down the street to get dinner after hooking up (and before hooking up again shortly after). Our dynamic was intended as exclusively physical and short-term (he would be moving at the end of the summer), and the more we accidentally got to know each other and make each other laugh, the worse I felt when it ended.
I am moderately ashamed to admit this is a pattern. Most recently, just before the holidays a different interpersonal thread began fizzling out before my eyes, after months of mutual interest and just as I had started to let myself believe that a further version of intimacy, past just physical, was possible for me. The pending dissolution forced me to reflect on whether this behavioral pattern of offering intimacy to people physically without emotional accountability is actually what I want, or if it’s simply the formula I feel most confident about implementing when I desire some kind of meaningful interpersonal interaction. And instead of leaning into what could’ve been an actionable learning moment for me, I did what any young, hot, and single person in the city would do: I got really into chess.
Being the Virgo moon/immigrant/eldest daughter/recovering Catholic that I am, the self-flagellating task of learning chess theory is immensely rewarding. There are more possible variations of chess games than atoms in the observable universe. I become strangely obsessed with unraveling this ancient ball of yarn. Throwing myself into this game was somewhat uncharacteristic—I don’t consider myself particularly passionate about or interested in confronting large bodies of data, and I’m not competitive. Which is what made this game the perfect method of distracting myself from the foibles of my emotional self-awareness—hard to think about your abandonment issues while you are studying the vast nuances between a 1.e4 and 1.d4 opening.
Learning chess requires all of me, and it’s refreshing to fiercely commit to something that is unrelated to work or my fear of being inherently unlovable. Sam Ratliff recommends I join Lichess so that I can analyze and learn from my games, which I do religiously. I convince friends to join Lichess (Add me! filipinosmentioned). I fall asleep nearly every night watching commentary of tournament matches, instructional videos on openings, and (of course) the cheating scandals.
Gradually, it becomes more difficult to act like I don’t notice the stench arising from the rotting carcass of this Grade A Coping. Analyzing my chess games starts to feel like attending therapy, so the novelty wears off and I’m having less fun. I never see my opponent’s retreating knights. I frequently lose sight of the board position. I develop an affinity for aggressive openings that allow me the earliest possible opportunity to make an attack but realize that as a result, I consistently neglect to develop a strong foundation that benefits me over the course of the game.
The stack of reading I have yet to do grows.
The week before heading home for the holidays, I join a meeting with my boss and her equivalent at a different DC theater. I read an attachment in our colleague’s follow-up email: an article she wrote years ago about her thought processes and strategies behind evaluating plays for selection into a new play festival. It’s a very tactical and transparent dramaturgy article–literally step-by-steps on how to evaluate technical skill, what questions to ask the writer, intro to dramaturgy. And then one of the final lines completely halts me: “Every day, I get to identify with the stories of people who live vastly different lives than I do, and my heart and mind are incrementally changed.”1
The statement is pretty straightforward. It only makes sense that if you read hundreds of scripts a year you will undoubtedly encounter experiences and people to which you don’t relate. What cracked in that moment for me was the acknowledgment of the questions that a writer asks of a dramaturg through their script: do you see me? And what are you going to do with this piece of me that I’ve shared with you?
I ugly-cried for probably an hour after finishing the article (I’m thankful for hybrid work models that allow me to work/cry from home!) I suddenly felt like I had been offered another chance to rethink my relationship to dramaturgy, to art at large, and to the gambit of vulnerability that every script, attempt at romance, and stranger in a coffee shop asks of me. To do this work is to invite change—to invite all the humility and vulnerability required to read hundreds of scripts and work with dozens of artists whose stories you are now responsible for holding. Because if I was qualified enough to be hired into this position, this means other people see in me the capacity for generosity that I see in other dramaturgs–and maybe I could work towards allowing myself to be changed.
As the Internet’s chess teacher IM Levy Rozman teaches me later that week, chess is less about “intelligence” and more about pattern recognition. There are a seemingly infinite number of ways that a chess match can transpire, so I am baffled at the knowledge that throughout the history of humans playing chess, we have all chosen specific combinations of moves and positions and enact them consistently enough to elicit patterns that we must study.
In January of the new year and after returning from holiday break (during which I forced my family and friends to play chess with me for several hours each day), I purchase a book titled Dramaturgy in the Making by Katalin Trencsenyi. I figure, if dramaturgy is now possible for me, I want to try and learn as much about it as I can outside of working hours. In the preface, the author notes that “dramaturgy is the action through which meaning is created by the recognition and arrangement of patterns.” Fine, I think. Between Katalin and Levy, it becomes clear that learning the patterns necessitates accountability to them. So I challenge myself to this.
I return to my chess studies with accountability in mind. I study lines. I work to understand defensive positions. I stop telling the people I meet that I only desire casual sex. I strive to read each play with the grace of knowing I could not have the courage that these writers have. I learn that a game of chess is generally considered in the arc of three phrases: the opening, the middlegame, and the endgame. It’s an infinite story that begins with a question. With opening.
The Wikipedia article about chess tells me it’s a game of “perfect information,” which means (roughly) that both players have access to all the information in the game, and the game is not affected by random chance. Both players see every piece on the board, and both players decide how their pieces move. Therefore, in order to win, I have to understand my opponent, and more effectively than they understand me. The information is only considered “perfect” because we both have access to it, but neither of us can fully understand the implications of each move (the amount of outcomes are unfathomable to our brains). If we understand the implications, the information would be considered “complete.” Every move that we each make is not meant to be a step toward understanding the whole of it; instead, we must assume that behind each player’s move is their best intention. And we must assume that we are constantly striving to understand each other.
I receive a text in late January–an apology from what had fizzled out from the holidays. I have the bitter instinct to delete it. Why acknowledge the accountability that comes too late? (As fellow nihilistic Taurus Lucy Dacus asks… what was the plan? Absolve your guilt and shake hands?) It feels really good to assume the worst of that person, so I ignore my therapist’s reminder that I have a tendency to succumb to a pattern of avoidance, and I let the text marinate in my saltiness with no intention to respond.
Endgames are hard to define. The greatest chess players disagree on when a match enters this phase; some believe it’s based on when each player is down a certain amount of material (pieces), some think it’s when both players have lost their queens, some believe you enter the endgame when a player can force a win or draw. I tend to agree with the last idea; the endgame is a phase in which one player has set up a situation wherein the other can only move closer to their loss.
It’s funny to me that there are no “closing gambits.” Setting up a gambit in the opening is a way to propose to the other player what kind of systems and strategies you’d like to play with them during that match. They can accept or decline your gambit, your way of opening the game. So what would it mean to offer your opponent various ways they can lose the game? What would it look like to have an unmistakable indication of the endgame? Probably something like that text. Except human relationships are not matches to be “won.” Something opens, you play with the growing understanding of each other’s patterns, and then it ends–no winners or losers. Just people moving with what you must assume is their best intention while trying to understand each other.
So I let this person change me, and I respond.
These words are from Adrien-Alice Hansel.
Acknowledgments + other bits
Thank you to Lukia for being the dramaturg of this essay and of my life. Also, thank you to Sam Ratliff and Ellie Hughes for their additional support. And thank you to Adrien-Alice Hansel for your generosity and for unlocking a new layer of my brain!
I also have to shout out Sonia Fernandez, who I have learned the MOST from this past year, about being a dramaturg and a human being in general.
And thank YOU🫵🏽 for reading! I did not expect to join the mafia of Substack writers in their 20s, but Medium didn’t offer the formatting support I needed so here I am (begrudgingly). Ok bye.