to MFA or not to MFA that is the question

So I'm impaled on the horns of indecision. I thought a couple of weeks ago that I might be well served to go after an advanced degree; specifically an MFA in Playwriting. It sounded good and made some sense to me at the time, as a lot of the jobs I'm looking at right now do say an MFA is desired, but not required. So it would make some nice connections in the writing end of things, and maybe help for the future of job search.

Of course, it would have down sides: cost for one, though the school I was considering, Hunter, is not that expensive for instate students; for another thing it would be a heck of a lot of work and would really get in the way, potentially, of further development of my solo piece thing. As I may have mentioned before there is some possibility of Old Hickory being performed at the Woodstock Fringe Festival this year, and who knows what after that . . . committing to an MFA track would kind of take care of the 'who knows what after that'.

Plus . . . in looking at my college transcript . . .well lets just say my college years weren't where I put my best foot forward. And I had very little in the way of theater courses. I can't for the life of me imagine why I did that . . . why I ignored that part of who I am back then . . . but I did. It's really all I ever wanted to do and when I had the chance to explore that in a college with a good theater dept. I chose to explore other, shall we say, internal areas. Well you make your choices and you can't go back and change them now.

At any rate, things have worked for me I'd say. My path to where I am now has been more circuitous than it might have been, but I can't say it was the wrong path, it just was a different one. And a lot of the beautiful things in my life right now, wouldn't be there had I gone full tilt into theater in college.

Now back to the MFA thing. So I signed up for the GRE and the date I signed up for got snowed out . . . this might be a sign. Also, I spoke to the counselor at the Actors Work Program and she suggested talking to people to see how an MFA has helped them, or not. She did say that there are a lot of MFAs that are in the AWP who are looking for work.

My gut right now is that the MFA thing might not be such a great idea. The path I'm on right now feels good . . . do I really need to add the angst? I had considered an MFA at one other point, before moving to NY. I was even accepted to WVU; but then I thought, that was just a way to keep from doing what I really wanted to do . . . which was move to NY . . . so I decided against it at that point . . . and put money down on a house! (that's how screwed up I was back then . . . I just didn't know which way to turn . . . when there really was only one way I was interested in) I finally snapped out of the buying the house thing . . . I ate my earnest money but I wasn't tied down; which was essential a few years later when I finally made the move.

By the way, a few months after I decided not to go to WVU, I got the opportunity to be directed by Edward Albee in Counting the Ways: that was an experience I would have missed had I gone back to school . . . not only that, but that play was what got me the dinner theater gig that made me 'equity eligible' when I finally did move to NY. And because of the equity eligibility I was able to audition for, and get cast in, The Trip to Bountiful with Ellen Burstyn, which is why I'm sitting in Nyack writing this.

So, as Kurt Vonnegut used to say: Go figure.