Dear Writer Director Letter #95

I’m so glad I got cancelled in Chicago Theatre. If that had never happened to me, I would never have discovered my purpose.

Olivia, Prop Thtr Artistic Director Announcement; Chicago Tribune; Aged 30.

Dear Writer Director,

I’m so glad I got cancelled in Chicago Theatre. If that had never happened to me, I would never have discovered my purpose. I would never have had to take inventory of my every action, motive, and thought. I would never have had to see myself as the monster. I would never have truly seen myself as the hero if that one fateful day in January of 2021 hadn’t happened.

It’s not useful to recount the play by play here. Basically, it happened online. I said one thing on the Internet, and a bunch of people attacked me with how they really felt about me. Then a bunch of my friends and other triggered people defended me. Then I let them coopt the narrative. It all happened so fast. Back then, I had a real problem with not being liked. I saw myself as good hearted and nice. It was a complete break with my sense of reality to consider that anybody might project anything sinister onto my meteoric rise in the theatre world.

I moved to Chicago in 2012 knowing no one, and within 7 years, I was Artistic Director of Chicago’s oldest Storefront Company, and the Chicago Tribune would call my productions, “The latest visionary work from Olivia Lilley”. People were jealous. They wanted to know how I did that, but they didn’t ask me. They assumed that I didn’t deserve it. They assumed I just had everything handed to me because I was pretty, petite, and white passing with a white last name. The truth is I never waited around for anybody to hire me. I hired myself again and again, and then eventually, I had partners, and then eventually I co-produced with Prop Thtr, and then they asked me to take over. I raised all of the money for my own productions. I organized all of the people myself. I didn’t win a single grant until I was 5 years in, but that story doesn’t conform to the popular narrative of how people ‘make it’, so my story was erased in favor of making assumptions based on what I looked like.

I’m so glad I got cancelled in Chicago Theatre. If that had never happened to me, I would never have discovered my purpose. When that happened, I was forced to look at everything that was fake and atrophied about me. I realized I was no longer the fearless 23-year-old who moved here from Los Angeles on a Greyhound bus. I had become a fearful gatekeeper terrified of losing her position whose organic whims and natural genius had been commodified into a brand. I had let myself value professionalism and systems above human-to-human interaction. Underneath everything I did during this time was the attitude that I was better than other people. Now I’m 36, and I understand that I’m no better than anyone, but I do have a mission in this life, and with great power comes great responsibility, and it is my job to take ownership of that responsibility no matter what happens. I will never skirt blame again because every little decision made, regardless of who makes it under my leadership, is my fault. That is just the nature of things. There is no escaping that. After January of 2021, I went to grad school and went into hiding from the public eye. I’m really glad I did. I needed it.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened had I just went about my business without any scrutiny. Would I have stumbled upon my original intentions and dreams for myself, or would I have just ended up middle management and middle class? What would have happened had my boyfriend at the time and I gotten along? Would I have a kid now? It’s easy for people to vilify the things that go wrong, but I have found that every rupture has gotten me closer to my true calling. For example, when I emerged from the cloud of my lived experience and my first decade as an adult, I realized that people’s distrust of me came from their own ignorance of how things actually happen. I decided to quit directing theatre projects for the foreseeable future and start a podcast to rectify the situation. There are so many more plays and films that I’d like to see made that I am not involved in. There are so many people who’s art I want to see realized fully. There’s no reason why talented people have to fight over a few slots. There’s no reason that I should have been alone in my position, in my world at the top. I am going to direct my debut feature this year, but if I want an actual ecosystem in which to debut it for real, we have to have an ACTUAL FAIR ECOSYSTEM. I have been called to be one of the people who forge that ecosystem, so now, I no longer hyper fixate on how I’m seen. It’s all about what the collective requires of me. What do people need to see in order to heal, in order to learn how to do things for themselves? It’s not about me anymore. I don’t know if it ever really was.

Olivia, Curator & Owner at DIY Venue The Parlor & Artistic Director of The Runaways Lab Theatre; Age 24.

Dear Writer Director, the day you are faced with who you have become is the day you are born. The day a part of you dies is the day you see what’s left. When things go away, they make room for other things. Young people, my former students, often express to me that they feel they have to hold onto what they’ve got, as if what they’ve already made proves they have worth. That’s not how life works. You can’t hold onto shit. You only have control over the person you become. There is no such thing as security in this life. You could die any second for freak reasons.

I’m so glad I got cancelled in Chicago Theatre. If that had never happened to me, I guarantee I would have become boring and ‘my glory days’ would have been behind me.

Love,

Olivia