ELYZABETH GREGORY WILDER
Keep Your Eyes on Your Own Work
Caitie McMekin
A
by Amy Cuomo
As a storyteller, playwright, teacher and full-time mom, Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder lives by a credo a teacher shared decades ago.
“I was in geometry class, paralyzed by fear that I was going to fail a test I had worked hard to prepare for,
and desperately trying to catch a glimpse of the test beside me,” Wilder told her Friday keynote audience at the 2019 SETC Convention. “The teacher walked by and, without anger or judgment, simply whispered in my ear, ‘Keep your eyes on your own work.’ I turned in the finished test. My teacher placed her hand on mine and said, ‘Trust your own work.’ ”
Above: Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder speaks to a large crowd at her Friday SETC Convention keynote.
Like most excellent advice, it immediately rings true, but is not necessarily easy to follow in real life. Years
later, Wilder recalled, she found herself at a high point in her career. She had graduated from New York University (NYU) with an MFA in dramatic writing, had scored a major production of one of her plays, Fresh Kills, at London’s Royal Court Theatre, and was working as a writer for a television show in Los Angeles. From the outside, it looked like she was living the dream. However, on the inside, she was comparing herself to others and worrying about a lack of external recognition. And that, Wilder said, “robbed me of the opportunity to
24 x Southern Theatre x Spring 2019
