Audrey A McGee

Starting your career is just slice after slice of humble pie.

It’s an acquired taste.

I went into my internship wanting to be professional, putting my best foot forward, impressing those I worked for. Which was fine until I would say something very confidently which turned out to be very wrong.

The example most easily coming to mind was a debate over something in Proof. If you’ve never heard of the play, it’s a story of a genius mathematician who’s slightly mentally unstable after the death of her father, a prodigious math professor. And there is a whole ton of math in this script.

One thing I prided myself on is not being *just* a theatre person — I was fairly proficient in some STEM subjects in high school, and I like to think I’m a critical reader. So when I came across something that looked like a blatant mistake in the script, I thought I had made a grand discovery.

It seemed so simple, almost ridiculous. Something about prime numbers, but I thought that the playwright said there was a large prime number that ended in 2 and I was like UM, NO.

I reached out to people — my old theatre professors, and a family friend who’s a math nerd. I think I framed it as asking a question, but I was secretly triumphant. “I FOUND A MISTAKE IN A MATH PLAY!”

The family friend read the portion of the script and responded to me.

It wasn’t a number that ended in 2.

It was some ridiculously large number — 2 to the enth power — PLUS ONE. Whatever number that was didn’t end with 2. And it was a prime number.

I had misread the script. And made a HUGE deal about it.

I felt so sheepish.

So much for being a critical reader. Maybe, just maybe, I should have recognized that a highly-acclaimed play about math wouldn’t have made an incredibly basic mistake without someone else noticing it.

I should have asked first instead of assuming I knew everything.

Now, none of this was actually related to my internship. It was during the same time frame that I was auditioning for Proof at a different theatre.

But — a few months later, my pride was tested again.

I was the directing shadow for Lewis and Tolkien, sitting in on the table work rehearsals. There’s one line where Tollers is criticizing Jack’s incredibly fast (and therefore clearly careless) writing style, and he says, “Seven trips to Narnia in five years?!”

One thing I pride myself on is being a *major* Narnia fan, where I’ve read the books over many, many times. And one consequence of this is knowing that they were all published in rapid succession, each one a year apart.

So naturally, my first instinct was “HA! A mistake in the script!”

But I remembered my melted wings from Proof and thought a second time:

“The publishing dates are the most obvious info out there. The playwright must know something I don’t if he said five years instead of seven.”

I looked it up, and sure enough, Lewis finished The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in 1949 and finished The Last Battle in 1954 — it just wasn’t published until 1956.

So I didn’t make a big fool out of myself in the table work sessions. At least not on that front.

I made sure to keep asking questions. Offering a random piece of info when I knew it, but presenting it not as an overachiever proving a point, but as a lover of the story who’s still learning a lot.

You are always a student, always a learner. This is true forever — in every single step of your career, you will be learning something. Get used to asking questions now, even if they end up making you look a bit silly.

It’s way better to ask a silly question and learn what you don’t, than thinking you know everything and being proved wrong.