Is the Enemy Yourself?
There’s a song I heard on Discover Weekly—jazz backbeat, someone speaking over it, half-poetry half-accusation. I can’t remember the artist or the title, but one line lodged itself in my brain:
“The enemy is yourself—posed as a question.”
Not a statement. A question you have to keep asking to stay honest about your own motivations.
I didn’t realize how much I needed that practice until Thursday night at Craft + Carry, drinking something called “Midnight Stout” that tasted like an espresso martini died in a Coke can.
I was meeting a producer from out of state who makes theater for one person at a time. Actual audiences of one. The radical specificity I’ve been arguing for, taken to its logical conclusion. We were talking too loud, gesturing with our terrible beers, hitting that rare frequency where you’re both relieved someone else gets it.
He was frustrated by the industry’s compulsion to rush work to the main stage before it’s built a genuine community. Before it’s earned its scale.
“Everyone’s desperate to get validated,” he said. “But validation isn’t necessity.”
I heard myself say: “A show should come to Broadway because it needs to, not because someone wants it to.”
He stopped. Set down his beer like we’d discovered something.
Then a playwright materialized at our table.
He’d overheard us, got excited by what he called our “manifesto.” Which should have been our first warning—nobody who uses “manifesto” unironically is about to say anything useful. He pulled up a chair without asking.
His Off-West End show had just closed. Not the good kind of closing. The kind where producers stop returning calls and your parents Google your name even though you begged them not to.
“Theater is broken,” he announced, with the odd cheerfulness of someone who’s decided his failure proves a point.
“Where was the venue?” I asked.
“Across from Buckingham Palace.”
My brain started calculating rent, operating costs, the weekly burn rate of keeping a hundred-seat theater open in one of London’s most expensive postal codes. The numbers were screaming.
“How did you try to get people in the door?”
“We had the best marketers. Under thirty. They knew TikTok.”
I took a long drink of my espresso-Guinness abomination and wondered if my tongue was supposed to feel like it was wearing a sweater.
“What did they actually do?”
He waved his hand. “Posted videos. Content. You know, the algorithm.”
I looked it up later, after we’d escaped into the October cold. Scrolled through the show’s content: trending audio with actors lip-syncing in costume, behind-the-scenes footage that could have been any show anywhere, that “tell me you’re a theater kid” trend that was already dead when they posted it.
Content that resonated with no one because it spoke the language of TikTok—the platform—not the language of humans who might need this show. Knew English but not how to write poetry. Optimized for virality in the abstract, not connection in the specific. Theater people performing for theater people, hoping someone would mistake their inside jokes for an invitation.
“Who was the show for?” I asked.
He looked offended. “Theatergoers, of course. The West End audience.”
These aren’t audiences. These are demographic abstractions—the language of people trying to speak to everyone, which means speaking to no one.
“Why do you write plays?”
“I’m in it for the awards.”
Nobody said anything. The other producer chugged his beer.
Is the enemy yourself?
Here’s what producers say: “We just need the Tonys.” “A Times Critics’ Pick will save us.”
A Tony nomination gives you six weeks. Maybe eight. The announcement hits, you get coverage, tourists buy tickets to see “the Tony-nominated show.” By June you’re back to baseline, needing to sell tickets for the next year if you want a sustainable run.
Who buys those tickets after the bump fades? Not Tony voters. Not Times readers.
The people who need your show. Who tell their friends: “You have to see this.” Not because it won an award, but because it articulated something they had no language for.
But here’s what matters: Having work that speaks to people is only half the equation. The other half is marketing that speaks the language of the audience you’re building community with.
Work that speaks + marketing that speaks = community that sustains.
The playwright had a show optimized for validators and marketing optimized for... scrolling at 2am? Theater influencers? Nobody in particular. But here’s what I keep thinking: He learned to optimize for validators because that’s what worked. That’s what gets producers to say yes. That’s what gets investors to write checks.
The system rewards chasing awards. It celebrates proximity to prestige. It makes “across from Buckingham Palace” sound like strategy instead of vanity. So when a playwright says “I’m in it for the awards,” he’s not being craven—he’s being honest about the only path he’s been shown.
If your show needs external validation to succeed, it shouldn’t exist. Because you’re admitting the work isn’t creating passionate advocacy, and you don’t understand who would advocate for it if it did.
But who taught him that external validation was the goal? Who told him location mattered more than audience? Who hired the Gen-Z marketer and called it strategy?
Every decision followed from a system that prizes wants over needs: expensive venue as resume line, demographic abstractions instead of specific audience, hire-a-Gen-Z-er instead of learning the language.
Is the enemy yourself when you optimize for validators instead of necessity? When you spend money on location instead of finding your audience? When you make choices because the system told you they lead to success?
Or is the enemy the system that taught you to confuse motion with progress, spending with strategy, validation with value?
Maybe both. Probably both. But the question forces you to look inward first.
Wants versus needs.
The playwright wanted his show Off-West End. Wanted that Buckingham Palace address. Wanted awards that would prove he’d made it.
But did it need to be there?
I don’t think he asked himself that. And I think he didn’t ask because the system never taught him to. The system taught him to speak to the collective WE—Tony voters, critics, validators who require you to sand yourself down. To make work that confirms their taste rather than challenges their assumptions.
But the shows that sustain? They speak to the collective someone. Specific humans who need the work so urgently that they return, bring others, make it part of their identity. Who require you to be so ferociously yourself that finding you feels inevitable.
The playwright optimized for consensus while standing across from Buckingham Palace. Location as legitimacy. Proximity to power as strategy.
He spoke to no one.
I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t acknowledge the obvious. I have that hunger too. The dinner party where “I produce theater” makes eyes widen. The social currency of seeming interesting.
We all want validation. The playwright just said out loud what most of us think quietly.
But what I need is to move and be moved. That necessity feeds me. Validation is dessert.
The moment validation becomes the meal—when you start speaking as what you imagine they want to hear rather than as yourself—you end up with work that resonates with no one.
Is the enemy yourself when you stop asking if the work needs to exist, and start chasing what you think success looks like?
Some mornings I wake up and necessity overwhelms everything. Other days I’m refreshing email, checking subscribers, wondering if this piece will make people take me seriously—which is deeply embarrassing to admit but here we are, being honest in public like adults.
Is the enemy yourself on those days?
Yes. But only if I refuse to notice. Only if I stop asking.
This is the practice: continuous self-interrogation. You keep asking because the enemy shifts. It’s not a fixed external force—it’s the part of you that forgets why you started. That gets seduced by what the system rewards. That makes work for the collective WE instead of the collective someone.
The playwright sitting at that table—he’s not a villain. He’s someone who learned the wrong lesson. Who internalized what the gatekeepers value and mistook it for what matters. Who followed a path laid out by an industry that prizes proximity to prestige over connection to community.
The moment you stop asking—when you’re certain you’re not the enemy, certain you’re making work from necessity, certain you’re immune to the system’s distortions—that’s when you’ve lost. That’s when you become someone who can sit at a table and say “I’m in it for the awards” without hearing how that sounds. Who can blame theater for being broken without examining your own assumptions.
That song keeps playing. That voice over jazz, asking something that sounds simple until you realize it’s the only question:
The enemy is yourself—posed as a question.
Not accusation. Not verdict. Practice. The tool you use to stay honest when everything’s optimized for dishonesty. You ask it before every project. Every choice. Not to arrive at purity—that’s impossible and frankly sounds exhausting. But to notice. To catch yourself before you drift. To remember the difference between what you want and what needs to exist.
When you make work for the collective WE instead of the collective someone, you end up across from Buckingham Palace.
Beautiful location. Empty seats. Speaking to no one.
Is the enemy yourself?
Not always. But sometimes. Maybe today. Maybe with this choice.
The point isn’t to never be the enemy.
The point is to keep asking.