Just Go For It!

Back in 2019, I was serving on the board of directors of the Colorado New Play Festival, hailed by The New York Times as one of the top festivals in North America. (Check us out here... CNPF.) At the time I was Executive Director of the Historic Chief Theater in Steamboat Springs and we hosted CNPF’s staged readings.

If you’ve never been around a new play festival, it’s a fascinating process. You’re not seeing polished Broadway productions, instead you’re seeing ideas in motion. Actors with scripts in hand. Scenes being rewritten between rehearsals. Playwrights trying things, adjusting things, discovering things in real time. It’s creative chaos in the best possible way, and it is all open to the public.  You can literally see these works in progress as they progress. (the English language sure is fun)

As a member of the board of directors we get to help choose the theatre companies that get invited to the festival each year. In 2019 we chose the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, and they were working on a play called Purpose. At the time, nobody was talking about Tony Awards or Pulitzer Prizes. Nobody was saying, “One day this show will have a Broadway run and head overseas.” It was simply a new work being explored by talented people willing to take a chance on an idea that wasn’t finished yet.

And that’s the part I can’t stop thinking about.

Because a few years later, Purpose went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and the 2025 Tony Award for Best Play. It completed a successful Broadway run this past summer, and now it’s headed overseas.

Somewhere in all of that history is a week in Steamboat Springs where audiences sat in a theater watching an early version of something that would eventually become extraordinary.

Now, to be clear, my contribution to the success of the play was extremely limited. I wasn’t rewriting scenes or directing actors. My role was mostly helping support a festival that believed new ideas deserved a place to grow. But honestly, that may be the lesson.

So many incredible things begin long before they look impressive.

We tend to celebrate things once they’ve “made it.” Once the awards arrive. Once the crowds show up. Once success becomes obvious. But the truly important moment usually happens much earlier, when somebody decides to believe in something before there’s any guarantee it will work.

That’s the entire philosophy behind Just Go For It.