So, apparently I’m the runner-up. Which is perfect, because Dog-Eared Truths was never about winning. It’s about limping forward with torn pages and coffee-stained margins, muttering “I’ll fix it in Act II” while life heckles from the cheap seats.
The play is a duel between Ronan and Caelum – though really, it’s Ronan vs. Ronan, with Caelum acting as the smug librarian of his soul. There’s a book. His life. Pages bent, folded, humiliated like a library copy of Fifty Shades left in a frat house. And what does Caelum do? Reads it aloud. Like an emcee at an open-mic night for traumas.
The festival thought this deserved a laurel. Runner-up. Which fits, because that’s what Ronan is: runner-up to his own potential, runner-up to the life he almost proposed to, runner-up to every version of himself that froze when the spotlight got hot. And yet – he’s still here. Still turning the page. Still holding the damn book.
That’s the point. We don’t get to slam it shut and demand a rewrite. We keep scribbling in the margins, inventing footnotes, doodling ducks with broken wings until suddenly they mean something. Runner-up isn’t failure – it’s the award you get for refusing to stop mid-sentence.
So thank you, Tampa Bay Theatre Festival, for giving Dog-Eared Truths a stage. Thank you for proving that the courage isn’t in the prize, it’s in the nerve to keep writing when the ink runs out.
And to anyone stuck in their own chapter: fold the corner, curse the binding, but for God’s sake – keep going.
Because the book isn’t finished. And neither are you.
Brian Brijbag 